Abstract:We provide an updated recommendation for the usage of sets of parton distribution functions (PDFs) and the assessment of PDF and PDF+α s uncertainties suitable for applications at the LHC Run II. We review developments since the previous PDF4LHC recommendation, and discuss and compare the new generation of PDFs, which include substantial information from experimental data from the Run I of the LHC. We then propose a new prescription for the combination of a suitable subset of the available PDF sets, which is presented in terms of a single combined PDF set. We finally discuss tools which allow for the delivery of this combined set in terms of optimized sets of Hessian eigenvectors or Monte Carlo replicas, and their usage, and provide some examples of their application to LHC phenomenology. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Guido Altarelli (1941Altarelli ( -2015, whose seminal work made possible the quantitative study of parton distribution functions.

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Guido Altarelli who sadly passed away as it went to press. The results which it presents are founded on the principles and the formalism which he developed in his pioneering theoretical work on Quantum Chromodynamics in deep-inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering nearly four decades ago rent e ± p scattering for zero beam polarisation. The data were taken at proton beam energies of 920, 820, 575 and 460 GeV and an electron beam energy of 27.5 GeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 1 fb −1 and span six orders of magnitude in negative four-momentum-transfer squared, Q 2 , and Bjorken x. The correlations of the systematic uncertainties were evaluated and taken into account for the combination. The combined cross sections were input to QCD analyses at leading order, next-to-leading order and at next-to-next-to-leading order, providing a new set of parton distribution functions, called HERAPDF2.0. In addition to the experimental uncertainties, model and parameterisation uncertainties were assessed for these parton distribution functions. Variants of HERAPDF2.0 with an alternative gluon parameterisation, HERAPDF2.0AG, and using fixedflavour-number schemes, HERAPDF2.0FF, are presented. The analysis was extended by including HERA data on charm and jet production, resulting in the variant HERAPDF2.0Jets. The inclusion of jet-production cross sections made a simultaneous determination of these parton distributions and the strong coupling constant possible, resulting in α s (M 2 Z ) = 0.1183 ± 0.0009(exp) ± 0.0005(model/parameterisation) ± 0.0012(hadronisation) and results on electroweak unification and scaling violations are also presented. H1 and ZEUS