====== Extending the SLHA: cross section information ======

== Interested people (please add your name) ==
Benjamin, Peter, Sezen, Filip, Ben, Pietro, Werner, Alex A., Nazila, Wolfgang

The plans is to add new blocks to a supersymmetric spectrum with information on production cross section of particles included in the spectrum of interest. We propose to add one new block for each process under consideration.

The block starts with
<code>
XSECTION SQRTS PDG_CODE1 PDG_CODE2 NF PDG_CODE3 ....
</code>
where 
  * **SQRTS**: a floating number representing the center-of-mass energy, to be given in GeV.
  * **PDG_CODE1** and **PDG_CODE2**: two integer numbers, representing the pdg codes of the initial state particles
  * **NF**: an integer number, representing the number of final state particles
  * **PDG_CODE3**, **PDG_CODE4**, ...: NF integer numbers, representing the pdg codes of the final state particles

This general information line is then followed by the cross section themselves, given as a series of line under the form
<code>
  SCALE_SCHEME QCD_ORDER EW_ORDER KAPPA_F KAPPA_R  PDF_ID VALUE CODE VERSION
</code>
where
  * **SCALE_SCHEME**: an integer number, related to the way the central scales are chosen. So far, the choices are 
    * 0: the central scale is the average mass of the produced particles
    * 1: fixed scales
    * 2: the scale is set to the partonic center-of-mass energy
    * 3: the scale is set to the transverse mass of the final state particles
  * **QCD_ORDER**: an integer number, which contains information on the order in alpha_s included in the computation. This is codified as 
    * 0: Born cross section
    * 1: NLO cross section
    * 2: NLO+NLL cross section
  * **EW_ORDER**: same as above but with respect to electroweak corrections
  * ** KAPPA_F**: a floating point number, related to the variation of the factorization scale with respect to the central scale. For SCALE_SCHEME set to 1, the scale itself has to be provided.
  * ** KAPPA_R**: same as above, for the renormalization scale
  * **PDF_ID**: the lhapdf code of the employed parton densities
  * **VALUE**: a floating point number, representing the value of the cross section in pb.
  * **CODE**: a string representing the name of the program which has computed the cross section
  * **VERSION**: a string, the version number of the proram employed