Combining QCD matrix elements at next-to-leading order with parton showers in electroproduction

Abstract

We present a method to combine next-to-leading order (NLO) matrix elements in QCD with leading logarithmic parton showers by applying a suitably modified version of the phase-space-slicing method. The method consists of subsuming the NLO corrections into a scale-dependent phase-space-slicing parameter, which is then automatically adjusted to cut out the leading order, virtual, soft and collinear contributions in the matrix element calculation. In this way a positive NLO weight is obtained, which can be redistributed by a parton shower algorithm. As an example, we display the method for single-jet inclusive cross sections at $\mathcal{O}({\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s})$ in electroproduction. We numerically compare the modified version of the phase-space-slicing method with the standard approach and find very good agreement on the percent level.