Event generators are software libraries that generate simulated high-energy particle physics events. [1] [2] They randomly generate events as those produced in particle accelerators, collider experiments or the early universe. Events come in different types called processes as discussed in the Automatic calculation of particle interaction or decay article.
Despite the simple structure of the tree-level perturbative quantum field theory description of the collision and decay processes in an event, the observed high-energy process usually contains significant amount of modifications, like photon and gluon bremsstrahlung or loop diagram corrections, that usually are too complex to be easily evaluated in real calculations directly on the diagrammatic level. Furthermore, the non-perturbative nature of QCD bound states makes it necessary to include information that is well beyond the reach of perturbative quantum field theory, and also beyond present ability of computation in lattice QCD. And in collisional systems more complex than a few leptons and hadrons (e.g. heavy-ion collisions), the collective behavior of the system would involve a phenomenological description that also cannot be easily obtained from the fundamental field theory by a simple calculus.
As said above, the experimental calibration involves processes that usually are too complicated to be easily evaluated in calculations directly, so any realistic test of the underlying physical process in a particle accelerator experiment, therefore, requires an adequate inclusion of these complex behaviors surrounding the actual process. Based on the fact that in most processes a factorization of the full process into individual problems is possible (which means a negligible effect from interference), these individual processes are calculated separately, and the probabilistic branching between them are performed using Monte Carlo methods.
The final-state particles generated by event generators can be fed into the detector simulation, allowing a precise prediction and verification for the entire system of experimental setup. However, as the detector simulation is usually a complex and computationally expensive task, simple event analysis techniques are also performed directly on event generator results.
Some automatic software packages exist, that help in constructing event generators and are sometimes viewed as generators of event generators or meta-generators.
Partly due to historic reasons, most event generators are written in FORTRAN 77, with a few C++ generators slowly emerging in recent years. The Particle Data Group maintains a standard for designating Standard Model particles and resonances with integer codes in event generators (also known as the "PDG code").
A typical hadronic event generator simulates the following subprocesses:
A typical heavy-ion event generator usually can be less strict in simulating the rare and rather negligible processes found in a hadronic generator, but would need to simulate the following subprocesses, in addition to those in a hadronic generator:
The major event generators that are used by current experiments are:
Hadronic event generators [3]
Multi-purpose parton level generators
Heavy ion event generators
Neutrino event generators
Specialized event generators
"Meta-generator"
A gluon is a type of massless elementary particle that mediates the strong interaction between quarks, acting as the exchange particle for the interaction. Gluons are massless vector bosons, thereby having a spin of 1. Through the strong interaction, gluons bind quarks into groups according to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), forming hadrons such as protons and neutrons.
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France. The goal of the CMS experiment is to investigate a wide range of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter.
The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.
In physics, the pomeron is a Regge trajectory — a family of particles with increasing spin — postulated in 1961 to explain the slowly rising cross section of hadronic collisions at high energies. It is named after Isaak Pomeranchuk.
Hadronization is the process of the formation of hadrons out of quarks and gluons. There are two main branches of hadronization: quark-gluon plasma (QGP) transformation and colour string decay into hadrons. The transformation of quark-gluon plasma into hadrons is studied in lattice QCD numerical simulations, which are explored in relativistic heavy-ion experiments. Quark-gluon plasma hadronization occurred shortly after the Big Bang when the quark–gluon plasma cooled down to the Hagedorn temperature when free quarks and gluons cannot exist. In string breaking new hadrons are forming out of quarks, antiquarks and sometimes gluons, spontaneously created from the vacuum.
In particle physics, quarkonium is a flavorless meson whose constituents are a heavy quark and its own antiquark, making it both a neutral particle and its own antiparticle. The name "quarkonium" is analogous to positronium, the bound state of electron and anti-electron. The particles are short-lived due to matter-antimatter annihilation.
Quark matter or QCD matter refers to any of a number of hypothetical phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons, of which the prominent example is quark-gluon plasma. Several series of conferences in 2019, 2020, and 2021 were devoted to this topic.
Two-photon physics, also called gamma–gamma physics, is a branch of particle physics that describes the interactions between two photons. Normally, beams of light pass through each other unperturbed. Inside an optical material, and if the intensity of the beams is high enough, the beams may affect each other through a variety of non-linear effects. In pure vacuum, some weak scattering of light by light exists as well. Also, above some threshold of this center-of-mass energy of the system of the two photons, matter can be created.
A jet is a narrow cone of hadrons and other particles produced by the hadronization of quarks and gluons in a particle physics or heavy ion experiment. Particles carrying a color charge, i.e. quarks and gluons, cannot exist in free form because of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) confinement which only allows for colorless states. When protons collide at high energies, their color charged components each carry away some of the color charge. In accordance with confinement, these fragments create other colored objects around them to form colorless hadrons. The ensemble of these objects is called a jet, since the fragments all tend to travel in the same direction, forming a narrow "jet" of particles. Jets are measured in particle detectors and studied in order to determine the properties of the original quarks.
ALICE is one of nine detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The other eight are ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, LHCf, MoEDAL, FASER and SND@LHC.
In particle physics, the parton model is a model of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, proposed by Richard Feynman. It is useful for interpreting the cascades of radiation produced from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) processes and interactions in high-energy particle collisions.
PYTHIA is a computer simulation program for particle collisions at very high energies in particle accelerators.
The Les Houches Accords are agreements between particle physicists to standardize the interface between the matrix element programs and the event generators used to calculate different quantities. The original accord was initially formed in 2001, at a conference in Les Houches, in the French Alps, before it was subsequently expanded.
CompHEP is a software package for automatic computations in high energy physics from Lagrangians to collision events or particle decays.
Richard Keith Ellis, is a British theoretical physicist, working at the University of Durham, and a leading authority on perturbative quantum chromodynamics and collider phenomenology.
The automatic calculation of particle interaction or decay is part of the computational particle physics branch. It refers to computing tools that help calculating the complex particle interactions as studied in high-energy physics, astroparticle physics and cosmology. The goal of the automation is to handle the full sequence of calculations in an automatic (programmed) way: from the Lagrangian expression describing the physics model up to the cross-sections values and to the event generator software.
Quark–gluon plasma is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal and chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that free color charges are allowed. In a 1987 summary, Léon van Hove pointed out the equivalence of the three terms: quark gluon plasma, quark matter and a new state of matter. Since the temperature is above the Hagedorn temperature—and thus above the scale of light u,d-quark mass—the pressure exhibits the relativistic Stefan-Boltzmann format governed by temperature to the fourth power and many practically massless quark and gluon constituents. It can be said that QGP emerges to be the new phase of strongly interacting matter which manifests its physical properties in terms of nearly free dynamics of practically massless gluons and quarks. Both quarks and gluons must be present in conditions near chemical (yield) equilibrium with their colour charge open for a new state of matter to be referred to as QGP.
The photon structure function, in quantum field theory, describes the quark content of the photon. While the photon is a massless boson, through certain processes its energy can be converted into the mass of massive fermions. The function is defined by the process e + γ → e + hadrons. It is uniquely characterized by the linear increase in the logarithm of the electronic momentum transfer logQ2 and by the approximately linear rise in x, the fraction of the quark momenta within the photon. These characteristics are borne out by the experimental analyses of the photon structure function.
STARlight is a computer simulation event generator program to simulate ultra-peripheral collisions among relativistic nuclei. It simulates both photonuclear and two-photon interactions. It can simulate multiple interactions among a single ion pair, such as vector meson photoproduction accompanied by mutual Coulomb excitation.
The WA70 experiment was a collaboration between the Universities of Geneva, Glasgow, Liverpool, Milan and Neuchatel using the facilities of the OMEGA spectrometer at CERN.