Merging of matrix elements and parton showers at NLO accuracy

Abstract

The merging of matrix elements and parton showers is an established calculational tool for the description of multi-jet final states at hadron colliders. These methods have recently been promoted to next-to-leading order accuracy in the description of hard well separated jets. This talk introduces such a method and discusses its application to phenomenologically relevant signal and background processes. The systematic assessment of its theoretical uncertainty is a prime focus.

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, proceedings contribution to EPS 2013, Stockholm, 17-24 July