Prompt Photon Production with Two Jets in POWHEG

Abstract

Prompt photon production is highly sensitive to the distribution of quarks and gluons in free protons and nuclei and is an important baseline for phenomenological studies of the quark-gluon plasma. We present a next-to-leading order QCD calculation for prompt photons produced alongside two jets, implemented via the POWHEG method and matched to parton shower simulations, extending prior single-jet work. We study how different parton showers describe photon fragmentation and photon-jet correlations, and compare with ATLAS data and higher-order calculations, finding that both shower models improve agreement with observations.