Next-to-leading order QCD calculations with parton showers II: soft singularities

Abstract

Programs that calculate observables in quantum chromodynamics at next-to-leading order typically generate events that consist of partons rather than hadrons -- and just a few partons at that. These programs would be much more useful if the few partons were turned into parton showers, which could be given to one of the Monte Carlo event generators to produce hadron showers. In a previous paper, we have seen how to generate parton showers related to the final state collinear singularities of the perturbative calculation for the example of e+ + e- --> 3 jets. This paper discusses the treatment of the soft singularities.