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Acceleration of matrix element computations for precision measurements

The matrix element technique provides a superior statistical sensitivity for precision measurements of important parameters at hadron colliders, such as the mass of the top quark or the cross section for the production of Higgs bosons. The main practical limitation of the technique is its high computational demand. Using the concrete example of the top quark mass, we present two approaches to reduce the computation time of the technique by a factor of 90. First, we utilize low-discrepancy sequences for numerical Monte Carlo integration in conjunction with a dedicated estimator of numerical uncertainty, a novelty in the context of the matrix element technique. Second, we utilize a new approach that factorizes the overall jet energy scale from the matrix element computation, a novelty in the context of top quark mass measurements. The utilization of low-discrepancy sequences is of particular general interest, as it is universally applicable to Monte Carlo integration, and independent of the computing environment.