Characterizing the hadronization of parton showers using the HOMER method

Abstract: We update the HOMER method, a technique to solve a restricted version of the inverse problem of hadronization -- extracting the Lund string fragmentation function $f(z)$ from data using only observable information. Here, we demonstrate its utility by extracting $f(z)$ from synthetic Pythia simulations using high-level observables constructed on an event-by-event basis, such as multiplicities and shape variables. Four cases of increasing complexity are considered, corresponding to $e^+e^-$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $90$ GeV producing either a string stretched between a $q$ and $\bar{q}$ containing no gluons; the same string containing one gluon $g$ with fixed kinematics; the same but the gluon has varying kinematics; and the most realistic case, strings with an unrestricted number of gluons that is the end-result of a parton shower. We demonstrate the extraction of $f(z)$ in each case, with the result of only a relatively modest degradation in performance of the HOMER method with the increased complexity of the string system.