2025/09/29 by Saliha Bashir, Bashir, Saliha, A. Obłąkowska-Mucha +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.24567
openalex publication_date 2025/09/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Monte Carlo Event Generators are tools for simulating outcomes of high-energy collisions and particle production in High Energy Physics (HEP), such as those conducted at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Two of the most widely used general-purpose event generators are Pythia and Herwig, both of which play a significant role in understanding particle production, the internal structure of the proton, and the underlying physics of interactions that take place at LHC. This paper focuses on the modelling of low-energy diffractive and minimum-bias proton-proton collisions, where soft QCD effects and MPI dominate particle production, rather than hard perturbative processes. The LHCb experiment focuses on studying heavy quark hadrons, and given its specialization in precision measurements and rare decays, the choice of event generator for simulations is crucial. In this paper, we present a comparison between simulations using Pythia and Herwig with LHCb data. Our analysis demonstrates that Pythia provides a more consistent agreement with experimental measurements across key observables and hence remains the preferred generator for many particle physics analyses at the LHCb experiment, ensuring its continued importance in future high-energy physics research. \keywordsparticle decays, rare decays, simulation, parameter sensitivity, generator tuning, simulation tools