2026/07/21 by Frank Krauss, Peter Meinzinger
#hep-ph
We present an automated framework within the Sherpa event generator for the simulation of photon-induced processes in high-energy collisions of protons and nuclei. The calculation builds upon the equivalent-photon approximation and incorporates different form factor parametrisations, taking into account the full dependence on the finite size of emitters and their impact parameter. Higher-order effects are taken into account automatically by either YFS-resummation of soft photon emissions to all orders or Next-to-Leading Order in electroweak theory. We validate our simulation framework using data from two representative ATLAS measurements of exclusive μ-pair production in pp and Pb+Pb collisions. Exemplary predictions for exclusive W-pair production in pp collisions and τ-pair production in both pp and Pb+Pb collisions are presented.