Syntax for coupling orders in version ≥ 3.2

Asked by Baptiste Ravina

Dear experts,

I'm using MadGraph 3.3.1 to generate the ttbar process at NLO, and decay it with MadSpin. Before MG 3.2, I would have written:

 generate p p > t t~ QED=0 QCD=2 [QCD]

In MG 3.3, if I do that, I get an error saying:

 "Potentially ambiguous syntax detected. Note that the syntax of paper 1804.10017 (used in 3.0.x) is not used anymore (since version 3.1.0). If you want to follow the syntax of that paper, you can just replace QED by aEW and QCD by aS".

So I rewrite it as:

 generate p p > t t~ aEW=0 aS=2 [QCD]

and now the generation succeeds. But to decay the tops, MadSpin needs to compute the matrix element for real emissions again, specifically:

 "generating the production square matrix element
 generate p p > t t~ aEW=0 aS=2 --no_warning=duplicate; define pert_QCD = -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 21; add process p p > t t~ pert_QCD aEW=0 aS=2 --no_warning=duplicate"

and this fails here on the pert_QCD part (which is just adding another parton) because it's not covered by aS=2 and therefore "there is no diagram". I suspect that here MadSpin should really have considered QCD=3 but couldn't translate it from aS=2.

At that point, I can trick it into finding diagrams with QCD=3 by requesting it from the start (in this particular case, it doesn't change the diagrams that are generated in MadGraph):

 generate p p > t t~ aEW=0 aS=3 [QCD]

and now MadSpin is happy with the diagrams but still complains as "Decay processes cannot specify squared orders constraints" - and aS/aEW are constraints on QCD^2/QED^2 (?)

So what's the proper way of writing the generation + decay processes? Is this fixed in newer versions of MG?

Cheers,
Baptiste

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
MadGraph5_aMC@NLO Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Olivier Mattelaer (olivier-mattelaer) said :
#1

my advise would be to keep the 2.9 type of syntax but typing
"set acknowledged_v3.1_syntax True"
and then
generate p p > t t~ QED=0 QCD=2 [QCD]
should work and madspin will not have any issue.

Cheers,

Olivier

Revision history for this message
Jason Gombas (gombasja) said :
#2

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Baptiste Ravina for more information if necessary.

To post a message you must log in.