A standard convention for particle-level Monte Carlo event-variation weights

• DOI: 10.21468/scipostphyscore.6.1.007
• Publication Date: 2023-02-08T11:53:17Z
• Authors: Enrico Bothmann; Andy Buckley; Christian Gütschow; Stefan Prestel; Marek Schönherr; Peter Skands; Jeppe R. Andersen; Saptaparna Bhatta...; Jonathan Butterworth; Gurpreet Singh Ch...; Louie Corpe; Leif Gellersen; Matthew Gignac; Stefan Höche; Deepak Kar; Frank Krauss; Jan Kretzschmar; Leif Lönnblad; Josh McFayden; Andreas Papaefsta...; Simon Plätzer; Steffen Schumann; Michael H. Seymour; Frank Siegert; Andrzej Siódmok
• Keywords: Science & Technology; Multidisciplinary; CROSS-SECTION CALCULATIONS; Physics; QC1-999; Physical Sciences; 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

Streams of event weights in particle-level Monte Carlo event generators are a convenient and immensely CPU-efficient approach to express systematic uncertainties in phenomenology calculations, providing systematic variations on the nominal prediction within a single event sample. But the lack of a common standard for labelling these variation streams across different tools has proven to be a major limitation for event-processing tools and analysers alike. Here we propose a well-defined, extensible community standard for the naming, ordering, and interpretation of weight streams that will serve as the basis for semantically correct parsing and combination of such variations in both theoretical and experimental studies.