Simulation Project Leaders Meeting 18-March-2008 ==== Attendees John Apostolakis (JA), Alfredo Ferrari (AF), Alberto Ribon (AR), Gabriele Cosmo (GC). Excused: Pere Mato (PM), Rob Veenhof (RV). --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Minutes - The 2008 PH/SFT annual report has been completed. - Summer students: one student has been assigned for activity in Herwig++. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Simulation physics validation & framework - Alberto - Meetings: o The physics validation meeting on February 27th had three presentations: + by M.Cascella on the final results of the ATLAS Tilecal 2002 analysis, for which a written report is in preparation; + by P.Strizenec on the ATLAS HEC studies using the HP extensions to physics lists, it has been reported no difference in the time window of interest, while by not applying any time cut, some difference is observed being explained mainly to the fact that without HP extensions the neutron capture process in the simulation is not well described (work is going on in Geant4 for improvement in this area); by applying all the necessary cuts, QGSP_BERT is the best physics list configuration which also satisfies the requirements; + by S.Kunori on the CMS 2006 H2 test-beam analysis, where a bug was found in the setup causing a 10% increase in response of the simulation, bug now fixed; now studying response of QGSP_BERT physics list, which seems OK although specific tuning of the Birks coefficient is applied; resolution is too good respect to data, still investigating; also looking at fraction of events with minimal deposits in crystals where it has been reported that the simulation is higher in the response, to be understood why. - Extension of ATLAS HEC analysis with Fluka: o Starting to include hits in the setup; expected some news at the next meeting. - GDML: o Z.Torszok is working on some issues affecting reproduction of reflected solids which have been identified in the current GDML plugin in Geant4. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Generator services - Alberto - Meetings: o The monthly meeting on February 6th was dedicated to MadGraph for which production is foreseen soon in CMS and where the authors are also directly involved. o The meeting on March 5th has been entirely dedicated to HepMC. - MCDB: o There has been an official statement by CMS confirming the intention of using MCDB for this MadGraph production, and justifying the LCG effort being put in the project. o Both MCDB developers S.Belov and L.Dudko are currently at CERN until mid-April and working on the integration of MCDB in the CMS software and to allow automatic uploading of events in the data-base out of the samples generated in production. - GENSER: o Intense activity has happened in the past month, following the plans for large production by the experiments. Several new releases of various generators packages have been provided by the authors, some problems were identified and reported to the authors. Most of the new versions are now installed and available. - HepMC: o In the meeting on March 5th dedicated to HepMC, a new release process has been discussed and established with L.Garren invited at CERN for the presentation. The idea is to guarantee stability to HepMC and have possibly no more than one major version per year. o The problem of adopting units in HepMC has been discussed, HepMC currently does not provide any way to specify units for quantities stored. The idea is to put in place a flexible mechanism which allows to specify the units and automatically convert them; the proposal is under preparation based on the feedback collected. o Also under discussion a solution for the PDF information stored in HepMC, in order to clearly specify whether x*f(x) or f(x) should be used; the former being proposed for consistency with LHAPDF. There has been also the request for adding LHAPDF set ID. o It will take roughly one month to have the new solutions included in a new major version of HepMC. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Fluka - Alfredo - Considerable effort is being put to understand likely problems of LHC startup and electronics radiation issues on a couple of caverns. Contributions which have reduced substantially the development activities. - Activity also for the neutron Time Of Flight facility, which will require manpower in the next phases. - Work is also carried out on the coupling of the software with machine tracking codes; trying to put in place a general interface for this in order to reduce the loss of particles being tracked. A similar request has been also expressed for CLIC. - Releases: o Planning to have a new release by May. The new release will include a new neutron library, for which everything is now ready. The library will also be sent to the Nuclear Agency of Energy. o Low energy interaction model for Ion-interaction: planned to extend the offline database to cover more projectile generation and lowered Coulomb barrier. o The new release will likely include also a new neutrino-nucleus generator (mainly contribution by INFN); currently, the deep-inelastic scattering part is already completed. o Reached over 2000 registered users, based on the number of registrations required for download of the code. o Expressing concern for the current lack of manpower mostly affecting the code development. - Defined a contract from IRSN for helping in judging the safety report for ITER; a fellow paid by IRSN has been assigned for this. - Slowly going on with the re-negotiation of the CERN-INFN agreement. - Meetings: o A training course will take place at CERN at the end of June; o Another training course will take place at NEA in Paris at the end of September. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Geant4 - John - Feedback from experiments: o ATLAS reports it is using 8.3.p01, and appears close to adopting the QGSP_BERT physics list for their forthcoming 2008 production, due to better physics results seen in the comparisons with test beams. After changes in production cuts to lessen the increase in CPU time, a factor near two is expected. o CMS: reported elastic high peak when using Bertini cascade; the issue is under investigation. o Obtained feedback from HARP about performance of physics lists between 8 and 9 GeV. A number of issues to improve have been identified; one is to include Fermi motion in quasi-elastic scattering. o Arranging with Alice to contribute to comparing TPC test beams with Geant4. - Development & testing: o Improvements to the FTF model have been made. A presentation by V.Uzhinskiy will be arranged for the next Physics Validation meeting. o Currently revising the system testing process, undertaking a move to the LCG nightly builds. Configurations tested are chosen by the testing team. Scripts appear reasonably flexible to cover the needs of Geant4 testing and improve overall automation. On the occasion a review of several of the tests will be done. - Organization: o The process for the election of the new Collaboration spokesperson has started, and the renewal of the Working Group representatives on the Steering Board is also proceeding. - Training: o There will be a course at Oak-Ridge (ORNL) in USA in May. o A training course at CERN is under consideration for July. o A training course is also being planned in French in November at LAPP, Annecy. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Garfield - Rob (offline report) - Completed the adjustment of Townsend coefficients on the bases of Penning transfers between excitations and ionisations. Also added integration of excitations over drift paths. This opens the possibility to simulate devices that rely (fully or partially) on detection of photons. In parallel, the systematic evaluation of Penning probabilities is proceeding. This work is to be presented in the RD51 workshop at NIKHEF in April. - New versions of Magboltz have been received; now starting the work on the full microscopic tracking of electrons. This is expected to take several months. - The Ansys interface has been considerably extended with amongst others multiple weighting fields and material maps. Example application for thick GEMs, explaining the observed increase in signal amplitude with the size of the so-called rim. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== AOB Next meeting scheduled for May 14th.