Computer Simulations of High Energy Physics

Abstract

This thesis describes the development of two independent computer programs, Herwig++ and Effective. Both of these programs are used for phenomenological predictions of high energy physics. Herwig++ is used to simulate events as measured at particle colliders. This thesis presents a new set of variables for parton shower evolution. These new variables retain the angular ordering feature of the variables found in the original HERWIG software, while improving the Lorentz invariance of the shower and improving the coverage of the phase space. Also developed is a new model for hadronization. By changing the distribution of probabilities of cluster decays into hadron pairs this model is able to enforce desired results, such as isospin symmetry or meson-baryon ratios, more intuitively. These new developments are compared against existing LEP data. Effective is used to generate the mass spectrum of supersymmetric models. This program is able to provide the 1-loop effective potential and 1-loop mass matrices for an arbitrary N=1 supersymmetric model. This software also is able to solve the renormalization group equations at one-loop for the parameters of the model and, in turn, provide the scale dependent values of these parameters.