The MC@NLO Package

Stefano Frixione, Fabian Stoeckli, Paolo Torrielli, Bryan Webber, Chris White


MC@NLO is a Fortran package to implement the eponymous scheme for combining a Monte Carlo event generator with Next-to-Leading-Order calculations of rates for QCD processes.

MC@NLO makes use of the Fortran HERWIG or C++ Herwig++ event generator.

The current (sub)version is MC@NLO 4.10, released on 17 July 2013. Relative to version 4.09 (released on 2 July 2012), version 4.10 allows a separate treatment of the bottom-loop contribution to SM Higgs production in gluon fusion: please see the manual for details. In addition there are minor changes for compliance with gfortran 4.6 or higher.

The processes available in this version are those of Higgs boson, single vector boson, vector boson pair, heavy quark pair, single top (with and without associated W or charged Higgs), lepton pair and associated Higgs+W/Z production in hadron collisions.

This version is compatible with Fortran HERWIG 6.5 or higher, which can be obtained from the HERWIG home page. Use of version 6.520 or higher is strongly recommended. See also the HERWIG wiki for latest news and updates.

This version is also compatible with Herwig++, which can be obtained from the Herwig++ home page. The user will have to provide installed versions of Herwig++ and ThePEG. We advise the user to adopt version 2.4.2 or higher for Herwig++ and 1.6.1 or higher for ThePEG. We stress that the options ReconstructionOption=General and InitialInitialBoostOption=LongTransBoost must be used when running Herwig++. These are automatically set by our script, and the user must not change them.


Here you can find


If you use MC@NLO, please cite the original publication:

  • S. Frixione and B.R. Webber, Matching NLO QCD computations and parton shower simulations, JHEP 0206 (2002) 029 [hep-ph/0204244]

and those relevant from the following:

  • S. Frixione, P. Nason and B.R. Webber, Matching NLO QCD and parton showers in heavy flavour production, JHEP 0308 (2003) 007 [hep-ph/0305252];
  • S. Frixione, E. Laenen, P. Motylinski and B.R. Webber, Single-top production in MC@NLO, JHEP 0603 (2006) 092 [hep-ph/0512250];
  • S. Frixione, E. Laenen, P. Motylinski, B.R. Webber and C.D. White, Single-top production in association with a W boson, JHEP 0807 (2008) 029 [arXiv:0805.3067].
  • S. Frixione, F. Stoeckli P. Torrielli and B.R. Webber, NLO QCD corrections in Herwig++ with MC@NLO, JHEP 1101 (2011) 053 [arXiv:1010.0568].

The program by B. Fuks, M. Klasen, F. Ledroit, Q. Li and J. Morel implementing Z' production in MC@NLO can be found here.


Last updated BRW 22/07/13