Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Scientific paper
2001-01-05
Phys.Rev.D65:014012,2001
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
36 pages, 12 figures, LaTeX; CERN preprint number added. Tables in Appendix C have been corrected; the calculation of W produc
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.65.014012
We apply the Lagrange Multiplier method to study the uncertainties of physical predictions due to the uncertainties of parton distribution functions (PDFs), using the cross section for W production at a hadron collider as an archetypal example. An effective chi-squared function based on the CTEQ global QCD analysis is used to generate a series of PDFs, each of which represents the best fit to the global data for some specified value of the cross section. By analyzing the likelihood of these "alterative hypotheses", using available information on errors from the individual experiments, we estimate that the fractional uncertainty of the cross section due to current experimental input to the PDF analysis is approximately 4% at the Tevatron, and 8-10% at the LHC. We give sets of PDFs corresponding to these up and down variations of the cross section. We also present similar results on Z production at the colliders. Our method can be applied to any combination of physical variables in precision QCD phenomenology, and it can be used to generate benchmarks for testing the accuracy of approximate methods based on the error matrix.
Brock Raymond
Casey D.
Huston Joey
Kalk Joshua
Lai Hung-Liang
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