Resolved Photons in Sherpa

Abstract

We present the first complete simulation framework, in the Sherpa event generator, for resolved photon interactions at next-to leading order accuracy. It includes photon spectra obtained through the equivalent-photon approximation, parton distribution functions to parametrize the hadronic structure of quasi-real photons, the matching of the parton shower to next-to leading order QCD calculations for resolved photon cross sections, and the modelling of multiple-parton interactions. We validate our framework against a wide range of photo-production data from LEP and HERA experiments, observing good overall agreement. We identify important future steps relevant for high-quality simulations at the planned Electron-Ion Collider.