Abstract
It is anticipated that hard double parton scatterings will occur frequently in
the collisions of the LHC, producing interesting signals and significant backgrounds to certain
single scattering processes. For double scattering processes in which the same hard
scale t = ln(Q2) is involved in both collisions, we require the double parton distributions
(dPDFs) Dj1j2
h (x1, x2; t) in order to make theoretical predictions of their rates and properties.
We describe the development of a new set of leading order dPDFs that represents
an improvement on approaches used previously. First, we derive momentum and number
sum rules that the dPDFs must satisfy. The fact that these must be obeyed at any scale is
used to construct improved dPDFs at the input scale Q0, for a particular choice of input
scale (Q20
= 1 GeV2) and corresponding single PDFs (the MSTW2008LO set). We then
describe a novel program which uses a direct x−space method to numerically integrate the
LO DGLAP equation for the dPDFs, and which may be used to evolve the input dPDFs
to any other scale. This program has been used along with the improved input dPDFs
to produce a set of publicly available dPDF grids covering the ranges 10−6 < x1 < 1,
10−6 < x2 < 1, and 1 < Q2 < 109 GeV2.