Parton Distribution Functions at the LHC

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The proton is made up of more fundamental constituents, quarks and gluons. These are parameterized as function of the fraction of the momentum of the proton they carry, and of the energy scale of the scattering process with which they are associated. The scattering cross sections and evolution of the parton distributions with energy scale can be calculated in perturbation theory using the strong coupling constant. However, the evolution equations need inputs which are intrinsically nonperturbative and have to be parameterized and obtained by comparison to data. The project will involve the improvement of these parton distributions by comparison to Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data and investigate the implications for further precision physics at the LHC. This will involve the inclusion of a variety of new types of processes into the parton extraction and improvements to the theoretical framework currently used.