Monte Carlo event generators & the top quark forward--backward asymmetry

Abstract

The leading-order accurate description of top quark pair production, as usually employed in standard Monte Carlo event generators, gives no rise to the generation of a forward--backward asymmetry. Yet, non-negligible -- differential as well as inclusive -- asymmetries may be produced if coherent parton showering is used in the hadroproduction of top quark pairs. In this contribution we summarize the outcome of our study of this effect. We present a short comparison of different parton shower implementations and briefly comment on the phenomenology of the colour coherence effect at the Tevatron.

6 pages, 10 figures, contribution to the proceedings of the HCP symposium 2012 in Kyoto, Japan