Simulation Project Leaders Meeting 21-September-2010 ==== Attendees John Apostolakis (JA), Andrea Dotti (AD), Alfredo Ferrari (AF), Witold Pokorski (WP), Rob Veenhof (RV), Gabriele Cosmo (GC). Excused: Pere Mato. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Minutes - Nothing to report. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Simulation physics validation & framework - Andrea - Validation Studies: o During the summer the main activity has been the validation with simplified calorimeter of the latest developments in preparation for the December release. In particular the new developments prepared for the Bertini Cascade model have been routinely tested. o Thick target simulations (both Simplified-Calorimeter studies and CMS test-beam) show that the Fritiof model in combination with the Bertini intra-nuclear cascade (FTFP_BERT) gives a description of the data at least as good as the one obtained with QGSP_BERT. In some areas (shower shapes, smoothness of response) the quality of FTFP_BERT is even better than QGSP_BERT. CPU performance is measured to be slightly slower. Also tests from ATLAS are expected, but not yet reported. - Meetings: o There have been no meetings during the summer. The next meeting is scheduled for September 22nd, where there will be a presentation by ATLAS on the validation of release 9.3 with test-beam data on the end-cap calorimeters. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Generator services - Witek - Meetings: o No meetings during summer. The next meeting is scheduled in November. - MC Generators tuning: o Good progress has been made on the realization of the tuning and validation web; the system which makes use of a data-base behind it, will include statistics and plots on the validation of the generators using the latest available public data from the experiments. The work is expected to be complete by end of the year in its first public version. - GENSER: o Introduced new version of Pythia, Pythia-8.4.2; also new version of Sherpa and Cascade. o Received new request from ATLAS for inclusion of two new generators. o The new infrastructure for building generators in the nighties is now in place with its web page interface. It was soon realized that the main use of it will be for development and testing. Actual users in the experiments require a more static and stable environment; this is now provided by putting in place special builds of the generators based on the different new versions of HepMC, independently from the nightly builds. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Fluka - Alfredo - Fluka: o Planning a new release by end of the year, Fluka-2010.3. A Beta version (Fluka-2010.2) is almost ready and likely distributed early October. The new release will fully support MacOSX 64-bits and will include quite a lot new development, particularly related to simulation for radiation damage. o Also developing a new graphical geometry modeler for easily plotting, zooming and rotating geometries; it will also include the possibility debug scanning for errors in the geometry. The new module will be integrated with FLAIR. - Meetings: o Advanced Fluka Workshop in Portugal on October 4-8th. o Preparing elections for five members of the Scientific Committee; elections expected to happen by end of the year. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Geant4 - John - Releases: o Patches 9.3.p02 and 9.2.p04 are currently under preparation. In addition to some fixes included also in 9.4-beta 9.3.p02 will provide fixes for energy non-conservation in Bertini and CHIPS models originally reported originally by ATLAS; fixes which will be back-ported to 9.2 series as well. Preliminary patches including such fixes were already provided to both CMS and ATLAS for testing. - Feedback from experiments: o New request from ALICE expressed at the last Technical Forum, regarding simulation of elastic and quasi-elastic interactions for anti-protons, anti-neutrons, anti-Helium/Triton at 100 Mev to 4 Gev per nucleon. Some treatment for anti-p is already in place but new development is required for the rest. Expected one or two new modeling options in the near future. o Received request from CMS for improvement of anti-p cross-sections. o Also received request for additional ENDF data library for neutrons, expressed at the last Technical Forum. - Developments: o Good progress has been recently achieved by V.Uzhinskiy (JINR Dubna) in improving the FTF model on comparisons with HARP-CDP data. o First comparisons with good results have been made between UrQND, Binary and FTF models, making use of a dedicated interface linking the original UrQND package with Geant4. o Good progress made also on the move of the Geant4 CVS repository to SVN and the implementation of a new tag collector replacing Bonsai. The work will be presented in the Collaboration Workshop in October. o A new Multi-Threaded prototype of Geant4 (Geant4-MT) based on release 9.4-beta has been prepared; after the presentation at the Collaboration Workshop, it will be also distributed to public for Beta testers. o Some activity has going on during summer as a summer-student project for measuring GPUs; as test-bed it was chosen part of the voxel navigation system of Geant4 and various performance measurements were made with interesting results. The tools used and available have nevertheless shown quite significant limitations. - Meetings: o Geant4 Workshop at ESA/ESTEC on October 4th-8th. - Management: o Makoto Asai (SLAC) has been elected new spokesperson of the Geant4 Collaboration. Marc Verderi (IN2P3/LLR) is the new deputy. o Andreas Morsch (CERN) has been nominated new chair of the Geant4 Technical Forum. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Garfield - Rob - Garfield: o Avalanche statistics paper based on historical data has been accepted for publication. Measurement campaigns to obtain further new data have been planned for the autumn. o Avalanche spread around anodes is being studied in collaboration with the Alice TPC group. The spread, measured via signal shapes, reflects the spatial extent over which transfers and gas feedback are taking place. o Gas feedback (not feedback from electrodes !) being investigated. An extensive dataset, obtained with a Micromegas in Saclay, implies that this mechanism is as important as transfers. The gross features are now understood but further work is needed prior to publication. o Microscopic tracking paper in Micromegas ready for submission, held up due to family circumstances of one of the authors. o Good progress in the field calculation algorithms, both for gas and for silicon detectors. - Meetings: o RD51 collaboration meeting in two weeks in Bari. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== AOB Next meeting scheduled for November 4th.