The group is actively involved in development and maintenance of the event generators PYTHIA, JEWEL, MG5_aMC@NLO, as well as involved in full-colour calculations useful for further development of parton showers. The group is also involved in the Rivet program for comparing experiment to data. Projects can be developed in all these areas, and adjacent ones. Below we outline what some possible projects could look like, but you are always welcome to contact relevant supervisors to discuss details, or if you have a project idea that you think could fit.

Exploring experimental signals

Our experimental colleagues often see interesting experimental signals, and ask us to compute input to either explain then, or to get suggestions for how to investigate in further details. There are many opportunities for projects here, and often they can be done with an experimental supervisor.

• Collective behavior in small collision systems - experiments have seen that collisions of protons, often behave similar to collisions of ions, where it is usually assumed that a Quark Gluon-Plasma is created. In these projects we will work on predictions for observables relevant for such investigations (contact: Christian Bierlich)
• Modifications of jets in collisions of nuclei (contact: Korinna Zapp)
• The production of the heavy particles at the LHC, such as top quarks and Higgs bosons, exhibit unique experimental signatures. Projects in this direction involve simulating LHC events to investigate and gain detailed insights into some of these specific features. (contact: Rikkert Frederix)

Structure of hard scatterings

• Color structures and orthogonal bases - The strong force is associated with the gauge group SU(3), and describing the SU(3) color structure is one of the challenges when dealing with scattering amplitudes in QCD. Typically the color structure is decomposed into non-orthogonal color-flow or trace bases. An alternative is to use orthogonal bases, based on group theory, and exploring this in various ways can be the topic of a master thesis (contact: Malin Sjödahl)
• Scattering amplitudes in the chirality flow formalism - It has recently been shown that the spin and momentum part of Feynman rules and diagrams can be rewritten in terms of "flows" of left- and right-chiral structures. This may simplify the computation of scattering amplitudes. Implementing aspects of this in a computer code (such as MadGraph) or exploring it with pen and paper may be the topic of a master (or possibly bachelor) thesis (contact: Malin Sjödahl)
• There are multiple methods available for calculating hard scattering amplitudes and matrix elements, each varying in accuracy and accompanied by distinct advantages and limitations. Projects focus on comparing these methods and potentially developing and implementing new ones. (contact: Rikkert Frederix)

Heavy ion theory development

The division is involved in several aspects of modelling collisions of heavy nuclei, and it is possible to do projects mainly on the theory/simulation side of this. A project will usually entail part model development, and part implementation in computer code, but individual projects can be taken in one of the two directions, depending on your interests.

• Geometry of heavy ion collisions - ions have different geometries, and in this project we will change aspects of the geometry of a single type of ion, and explore consequences in measurable observables (contact: Christian Bierlich)

• Modeling the final state of nuclear collisions with kinetic theory (contact: Korinna Zapp)

• Modeling jets and their modifications in nuclear collisions (contact: Korinna Zapp)