The SM and NLO Multileg Working Group: Summary Report
After years of waiting, and after six Les Houches workshops, the era of LHC running is finally upon us, albeit at a lower initial center-of-mass energy than originally planned. Thus, there has been a great sense of anticipation from both the experimental and theoretical communities. The last two years, in particular, have seen great productivity in the area of multi-parton calculations at leading order (LO), next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO), and this productivity is reflected in the proceedings of the NLM group. Both religions, Feynmanians and Unitarians, as well as agnostic experimenters, were well-represented in both the discussions at Les Houches, and in the contributions to the write-up. Next-to-leading order (NLO) is the first order at which the normalization, and in some cases the shape, of perturbative cross sections can be considered reliable. This can be especially true when probing extreme kinematic regions, as for example with boosted Higgs searches considered in several of the contributions to this writeup. A full understanding for both standard model and beyond the standard model physics at the LHC requires the development of fast, reliable programs for the calculation of multi-parton final states at NLO. There have been many advances in the development of NLO techniques, standardization and automation for such processes and this is reflected in the contributions to the first section of this writeup. Many calculations have previously been performed with the aid of semi-numerical techniques. Such techniques, although retaining the desired accuracy, lead to codes which are slow to run. Advances in the calculation of compact analytic expressions for Higgs + 2 jets have resulted in the development of much faster codes, which extend the phenomenology that can be conducted, as well as making the code available to the public for the first time. A prioritized list of NLO cross sections was assembled at Les Houches in 2005 and added to in 2007. This list includes cross sections which are experimentally important, and which are theoretically feasible (if difficult) to calculate. Basically all 2-3 cross sections of interest have been calculated, with the frontier now extending to 2 {yields} 4 calculations. Often these calculations exist only as private codes. Since 2007, two additional calculations have been completed: t{bar t}b{bar b} and W+3 jets, reflecting the advance of the NLO technology to 2 {yields} 4 processes. In addition, the cross section for b{bar b}b{bar b} has been calculated for the q{bar q} initial state with the gg initial state calculation in progress. Final states of such complexity usually lead to multi-scale problems, and the correct choice of scales to use can be problematic not only at LO, but also at NLO. The size of the higher order corrections and of the residual scale dependence at NLOcan depend strongly on whether the considered cross section is inclusive, or whether a jet veto cut has been applied. Depending on the process, dramatically different behavior can be observed upon the application of a jet veto. There is a trade-off between suppressing the NLO cross section and increasing the perturbative uncertainty, with application of a jet veto sometimes destroying the cancellation between infra-red logs of real and virtual origin, and sometimes just suppressing large (and very scale-sensitive) tree-level contributions. So far, there is no general rule predicting the type of behavior to be expected, but this is an important matter for further investigation. From the experimental side, an addition to the above wish-list that will be crucial is the determination of the accuracy to which each of the calculations needs to be known. This is clearly related to the experimental accuracy at which the cross sections can be measured at the LHC, and can determine, for example, for what processes it may be necessary to calculate electo-weak corrections, in addition to the higher order QCD corrections. On the theoretical side, it would also be interesting to categorize the impact of a jet veto on the size and stability of each of the NLO cross sections. The technology does exist to carry out a calculation for W/Z production at NNLO (QCD) and at NLO (EW). This process was placed on the wish-list in 2007 and it is unfortunate that the combined calculation has not yet been carried out, as this precision benchmark will be very useful and important at the LHC.