The MC@NLO Event Generator
S. Frixione, B. R. Webber
TL;DR
The paper documents MC@NLO 1.0, a manual for matching next-to-leading order QCD calculations with a parton-shower Monte Carlo (HERWIG) to simulate vector-boson pair production in hadronic collisions. It outlines a two-stage workflow where hard configurations are pre-generated and stored in an event file, which is then processed by HERWIG to produce showered events, including a controlled fraction of negative-weight events. The manual provides detailed guidance on software components, environment setup, data structures (event/data files), and a reproducible run workflow, including configuration of PDFs and inputs via MCatNLO.inputs and the Makefile. It also covers practical aspects of organizing outputs, building two executables (NLO and MC), and ensuring consistent inputs for reliable NLO+PS predictions. Overall, the document offers a pragmatic toolkit for high-energy phenomenology studies involving vector-boson pair production with NLO accuracy and parton-shower matching.
Abstract
This is the user's manual of MC@NLO.1.0. This package is a practical implementation, based upon the HERWIG event generator, of the recently proposed MC@NLO formalism for matching the next-to-leading order calculation of a QCD process with a parton-shower Monte Carlo simulation. The processes of standard-model vector boson pair production in hadronic collisions are available.