An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2

• Main Authors: Sjöstrand, Torbjörn, Ask, Stefan, Christiansen, Jesper R, Corke, Richard, Desai, Nishita, Ilten, Philip, Mrenna, Stephen, Prestel, Stefan, Rasmussen, Christine O, Skands, Peter Z
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 11-10-2014
• Subjects: Physics - High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1410.3012

The PYTHIA program is a standard tool for the generation of events in
high-energy collisions, comprising a coherent set of physics models for the
evolution from a few-body hard process to a complex multiparticle final state.
It contains a library of hard processes, models for initial- and final-state
parton showers, matching and merging methods between hard processes and parton
showers, multiparton interactions, beam remnants, string fragmentation and
particle decays. It also has a set of utilities and several interfaces to
external programs. PYTHIA 8.2 is the second main release after the complete
rewrite from Fortran to C++, and now has reached such a maturity that it offers
a complete replacement for most applications, notably for LHC physics studies.
The many new features should allow an improved description of data.