<chapter name="Automated Variations of Shower Parameters"> 
 
<h2>Automated Variations of Shower Parameters for Uncertainty Bands</h2> 
 
While a number of different central "tunes" of the Pythia parameters 
are provided, it is often desired  to study how event properties change when 
some of the parameters (such as those describing the parton showers) are 
varied.   Pythia has the ability to provide a series of weights 
to reflect the change in probability for a particular final state to occur 
when a subset of parton-shower parameters are varied.  Details on the 
implementation and interpretation of these weights can be found in 
<ref>Mre16</ref>. 
Currently, the list of available automated variations 
(see <a href="#keywords">full list below</a>) includes: 
<ul> 
<li> The renormalization scale for QCD emissions in FSR; </li> 
<li> The renormalization scale for QCD emissions in ISR; </li> 
<li> The inclusion of non-singular terms in QCD emissions in FSR; </li> 
<li> The inclusion of non-singular terms in QCD emissions in ISR. </li> 
<li> The PDF members of a PDF family in LHAPDF6. </li> 
<li> Individual PDF members of a PDF family in LHAPDF6. </li> 
</ul> 
Similar variations would be possible for QED emissions, but these have not 
yet been implemented. 
 
<p/> 
Since the computation of the uncertainty variations takes additional 
CPU time (albeit much less than would be required for independent runs 
with the equivalent variations), the automated uncertainty variations 
are switched off by default. 
<flag name="UncertaintyBands:doVariations" default="off"> 
Master switch to perform variations. 
</flag> 
 
<p/> 
The main intended purpose of these variations is to estimate 
perturbative uncertainties associated with the parton showers. Due to 
the pole at LambdaQCD, however, branchings near the perturbative 
cutoff can nominally result in very large reweighting factors, which 
is unwanted for typical applications. We therefore enable to limit the 
absolute (plus/minus) magnitude by which alphaS is allowed to vary by 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:deltaAlphaSmax" default="0.2" min="0.0" 
max="1.0"> 
 The allowed range of variation of alphaS, interpreted as abs(alphaSprime 
 - alphaS) &lt; deltaAlphaSmax. 
</parm> 
 
<p/> 
Likewise, non-singular-term variations are mainly intended to 
capture uncertainties related to missing higher-order tree-level 
matrix elements and are hence normally uninteresting for very soft 
branchings. The following parameter allows to switch off the 
variations of non-singular terms below a fixed perturbative threshold: 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:cNSpTmin" default="5.0" min="0.0" max="20.0"> 
Variations of non-singular terms will not be performed for branchings 
occurring below this threshold. 
</parm> 
 
<p/> 
By default, the automated shower uncertainty variations are enabled 
for the showers off the hardest interaction (and associated 
resonance decays), but not for the showers off MPI systems 
which would be more properly labeled as underlying-event uncertainties. 
If desired, the variations can be applied also to showers off MPI systems 
via the following switch: 
<flag name="UncertaintyBands:MPIshowers" default="off"> 
Flag specifying whether the automated shower variations include 
showers off MPI systems or not. Note that substantially larger 
weight fluctuations must be expected when including shower 
variations for MPI, due to the (many) more systems which then 
enter in the reweightings. 
</flag> 
 
<p/> 
The following parameters allow one to switch off all 
variations below a fixed threshold.  It is specified in terms of 
a multiplier for the <code>TimeShower:pTmin</code> squared (FSR) or 
<code>SpaceShower:pT0Ref</code> squared (ISR). 
A separate cutoff can be specified for ISR or FSR: 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:ISRpTmin2Fac" default="4.0" min="0.0" 
max="100.0"> 
Variations will not be performed for ISR branchings 
occurring below the threshold fixed by 
<code>UncertaintyBands:ISRpTmin2Fac</code> times 
<code> SpaceShower:pT0Ref^2 </code>. 
</parm> 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:FSRpTmin2Fac" default="4.0" min="0.0" 
max="100.0"> 
Variations will not be performed for FSR branchings 
occurring below the threshold fixed by 
<code>UncertaintyBands:FSRpTmin2Fac</code> times 
<code> TimeShower:pTmin^2 </code>. 
</parm> 
 
<p/> 
To ensure coverage of the phase space for the variations, the overestimate 
of the Sudakov used in the veto algorithm is artifically increased, which 
is compensated in the rejection factor. A larger factor reduces fluctuations 
at the cost of a longer generation time. The default parameters chosen are 
a compromise between time and fluctuations. 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:overSampleFSR" default="3.0" min="1.0" 
max="10.0"> 
The QCD FSR Sudakov is artificially increased by this factor. The increase 
is compensated for in the veto algorithm. 
</parm> 
<parm name="UncertaintyBands:overSampleISR" default="2.0" min="1.0" 
max="10.0"> 
The similar parameter for the QCD ISR Sudakov. 
</parm> 
 
<p/> 
The user can control whether the variations are calculated in all or 
specific stages of the event generation: 
<modepick name="UncertaintyBands:type" default="0" min="0" max="2"> 
<option value="0">  Variations are calculated where allowed; </option> 
<option value="1">   only for the process (including ISR and FSR); </option> 
<option value="2">   only for resonance decay and showering; </option> 
</modepick> 
 
<p/> 
<b>UserHooks Warning:</b> the calculation of uncertainty variations 
will only be consistent in the absence of any external modifications 
to the shower branching probabilities via the 
<aloc href="UserHooks">UserHooks</aloc> framework. It is therefore 
strongly advised to avoid combining the automated uncertainty 
calculations with any such UserHooks modifications. 
 
<p/> 
<b>Merging Warning:</b> in multi-jet merging approaches, trial showers 
are used to generate missing Sudakov factor corrections to the hard 
matrix elements. Currently that framework is not consistently combined 
with the variations introduced here, so the two should not be used 
simultaneously. This restriction will be lifted in a future release. 
 
<h3>Specifying the Variations</h3> 
 
When <code>UncertaintyBands:doVariations</code> is switched on, the user 
can define an arbitrary number of uncertainty variations to perform. 
To allow for combinations of individual parameter variations (such as 
a simultaneous variation of both the ISR and FSR renormalisation scales), 
the user generally requests <b>groups</b> of variations, each of 
which may consist of one or several individual variations. The 
format for specifying each variation group is: 
<pre> 
    Label keyword1=value keyword2=value ... 
</pre> 
where the user has complete freedom to specify the label, and each 
keyword must be selected from the 
<a href="#keywords">list of currently recognised keywords</a> below. 
Instead of an equal sign it is also possible to leave a blank between 
a keyword and its value. 
 
<p/> 
To exemplify, an uncertainty variation corresponding to simultaneously 
increasing both the ISR and FSR renormalisation scales by a factor of 
two would be defined as follows 
<pre> 
    myVariation1 fsr:muRfac=2.0 isr:muRfac=2.0 
</pre> 
 
<p/> 
Staying within the context of this example, the user might also want to 
check what a variation of the two scales independently of each other would 
produce. This can be achieved within the same run by adding two further 
variations, as follows: 
<pre> 
    myVariation2 fsr:muRfac=2.0 
    myVariation3 isr:muRfac=2.0 
</pre> 
Different histograms can then be filled with each set of weights as 
desired (see the 
<aloc href="CrossSectionsAndWeights">Cross Sections and Weights</aloc> 
page for how to access the weights). 
Variations by smaller or larger factors can obviously also be added in the 
same way, again within one and the same run. 
 
<p/>Note that, internally, Pythia only keeps track of the individual 
component variations. These are then combined together suitably in the 
output when requested. I.e., in the example above, Pythia only keeps 
internal track of two weight variations, for <code>fsr:muRfac=2.0</code> and 
<code>isr:muRfac=2.0</code> respectively; these are then combined together 
on the fly if the user requests 
the weight for the <code>myVariation1</code> group. 
See the 
<aloc href="CrossSectionsAndWeights">Cross Sections and Weights</aloc> 
page for how to access both individual and group weights. 
 
<p/> 
Once a list of variations defined as above has been decided on, 
the whole list should be passed to Pythia in the form of a single 
<aloc href="SettingsScheme">"vector of strings"</aloc>, defined as 
follows: 
<wvec name="UncertaintyBands:List" 
default="{alphaShi fsr:muRfac=0.5 isr:muRfac=0.5, 
alphaSlo fsr:muRfac=2.0 isr:muRfac=2.0, 
hardHi fsr:cNS=2.0 isr:cNS=2.0, hardLo fsr:cNS=-2.0 isr:cNS=-2.0}"> 
Vector of uncertainty-variation strings defining which variations will be 
calculated by Pythia when <code>UncertaintyBands:doVariations</code> 
is switched on. 
</wvec> 
 
<p/> 
For completeness, we note that a command-file specification 
equivalent to the above default variations could look as follows: 
<pre> 
    UncertaintyBands:List = { 
        alphaShi fsr:muRfac=0.5 isr:muRfac=0.5, 
        alphaSlo fsr:muRfac=2.0 isr:muRfac=2.0, 
        hardHi fsr:cNS=2.0 isr:cNS=2.0, 
        hardLo fsr:cNS=-2.0 isr:cNS=-2.0 
    } 
</pre> 
 
Note that keywords separated only by spaces are interpreted as 
belonging to a single group of simultaneous variations, while 
different groups are separated by commas. Note also that the beginning and 
end of the  vector is marked by curly braces. 
<p/> 
The combination of variations in a group has a total weight 
that is the product of those for the corresponding 
individual parameter variations. 
The individual parameter variations are bookkept separately because: 
<br/>(1) there is some potential redundancy of 
individual parameter variations between different groups, 
<br/>(2) they are often accumulated in different parts of 
the code,  and 
<br/>(3) the user might want to deconvolute the products in the group. 
 
<p/> 
In the example given above, there are 8 individual parameter variations 
<code> fsr:muRfac=0.5,isr:muRfac=0.5,fsr:muRfac=2.0,isr:muRfac=2.0, 
fsr:cNS=2.0,isr:cNS=2.0,fsr:cNS=-2.0,isr:cNS=-2.0</code> 
and 4 groups <code>alphaShi,alphaSlo,hardHi,hardLo</code>. 
 
<a name="access"></a> 
<h3>Accessing the Uncertainty Weights</h3> 
 
The methods for how to access the uncertainty weights are collected 
and documented on the 
<aloc href="CrossSectionsAndWeights">Cross Sections and Weights</aloc> page. 
 
<h3>NLO Compensation Term for Renormalisation-Scale Variations</h3> 
 
Additionally, there is a run-time parameter: 
<flag name="UncertaintyBands:muSoftCorr" default="on"> 
This flags tells the shower to apply an O(&alpha;S<sup>2</sup>) 
compensation term to the renormalization-scale variations, which 
reduces their magnitude for soft emissions, as described in 
<ref>Mre16</ref>. 
</flag> 
 
<a name="keywords"></a> 
<h3>List of Recognised Keywords for Uncertainty Variations</h3> 
 
The following keywords adjust the renormalisation scales and 
non-singular terms for all FSR and ISR branchings, respectively: 
<ul> 
<li><code>fsr:muRfac</code> : multiplicative factor applied to the 
renormalization scale for FSR branchings.</li> 
<li><code>isr:muRfac</code> : multiplicative factor applied to the 
renormalization scale for ISR branchings.</li> 
<li><code>fsr:cNS</code> : additive non-singular ("finite") 
term in the FSR splitting functions.</li> 
<li><code>isr:cNS</code> : additive non-singular ("finite") 
term in the ISR splitting functions.</li> 
</ul> 
Note that the <code>muRfac</code> parameters are applied linearly to 
the renormalisation scale, hence &mu;<sup>2</sup> &rarr; 
(<code>muRfac</code>)<sup>2</sup>*&mu;<sup>2</sup>. 
 
<p/> 
The keywords for PDF variations (plus and minus) is: 
<ul> 
  <li><code>isr:PDF:plus</code> : any number </li> 
  <li><code>isr:PDF:minus</code> : any number </li> 
</ul> 
The number is not used, but is there for syntactical consistency. 
Note, this uses the formula from the LHAPDF6 library to calculate the 
variation. 
 
<p/> 
Alternatively, the variation from the default to any other individual 
PDF member is calculated using the following syntax: 
<ul> 
  <li><code>isr:PDF:member</code> : member number </li> 
</ul> 
To force the calculation for ALL members of the PDF family, then use: 
<ul> 
  <li><code>isr:PDF:family</code> : any number </li> 
</ul> 
The number is not used. 
 
<p/> 
Optionally, a further level of detail can be accessed by specifying 
variations for specific types of branchings, with the global keywords 
above corresponding to setting the same value for all 
branchings. Using the <code>fsr:muRfac</code> parameter for 
illustration, the individual branching types that can be specified 
are: 
<ul> 
<li><code>fsr:G2GG:muRfac</code> : variation for g&rarr;gg branchings.</li> 
<li><code>fsr:Q2QG:muRfac</code> : variation for q&rarr;qg branchings.</li> 
<li><code>fsr:G2QQ:muRfac</code> : variation for g&rarr;qqbar branchings.</li> 
<li><code>fsr:X2XG:muRfac</code> : variation for gluon bremsstrahlung off 
other types of particles (such as coloured new-physics particles). </li> 
</ul> 
For the distinction between <code>Q2QG</code> and <code>X2XG</code>, 
the following switch can be used to control whether <ei>b</ei> and 
<ei>t</ei> quarks are considered to be <code>Q</code> or <code>X</code> 
particles (e.g. providing a simple way to control top-quark or bottom-quark 
radiation independently of the rest of the shower uncertainties): 
<mode name="UncertaintyBands:nFlavQ" default="6" min="2" max="6"> 
Number of quark flavours controlled via <code>Q2QG</code> keywords, with 
higher ID codes controlled by <code>X2XG</code> keywords. Thus a change to 
5 would mean that top-quark variations would use <code>X2XG</code> keyword 
values instead of the corresponding <code>Q2QG</code> ones. 
</mode> 
 
</chapter> 
 
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