Matching perturbative and parton shower corrections to Bhabha process at flavour factories Original Research Article

We report on a high-precision calculation of the Bhabha process in quantum electrodynamics, of interest for precise luminosity determination of electron–positron colliders involved in R measurements in the region of hadronic resonances. The calculation is based on the matching of exact next-to-leading order corrections with a parton shower algorithm. The accuracy of the approach is demonstrated in comparison with existing independent calculations and through a detailed analysis of the main components of theoretical uncertainty, including two-loop corrections, hadronic vacuum polarization and light pair contributions. The calculation is implemented in an improved version of the event generator BABAYAGA with a theoretical accuracy of the order of 0.1%. The generator is now available for high-precision simulations of the Bhabha process at flavour factories.