Simulation Project Leaders Meeting 1-March-2011 ==== Attendees John Apostolakis (JA), Andrea Dotti (AD), Witold Pokorski (WP), Pere Mato (PM), Rob Veenhof (RV) Gabriele Cosmo (GC). Excused: Alfredo Ferrari (AF) --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Minutes - A software review for NA61 has taken place on February 10th; planning to migrate their old simulation based on Geant-3 to Geant4; their physics requirements include a detailed description of hadron-nucleus, ion-nucleus collisions and fragmentation, therefore the possibility to exploit the existing Binary Light Ion cascade model in Geant4 and ad-hoc interface to the DPMJET II.5 generator. Also recommended to adopt HepMC as event generator record. - A new LD position has been opened for work in the Geant4 physics validation. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Simulation physics validation & framework - Andrea - Meetings: o The meeting scheduled for the end of February has been postponed and rescheduled for end of March. o A first contact with the NA61 experiment has been established. A mailing list geant4-na61@cern.ch has been created to address simulation needs specific to NA61. - Validation studies: o Preliminary investigations from CMS comparing on test-beam data has shown a decrease of the order of 1-3% for the visible energy in calorimetric setups using last January development release. This issue has been investigated in detail. All simplified calorimeter setups both for EM and for hadronic processes show a very stable response for all considered versions of Geant4. In addition, tests made in CMS on thin-target data do not reproduce such behavior, showing great stability instead. The reason for the observed discrepancy is thus not understood and further investigation from CMS experts is ongoing. o A.Dotti and W.Pokorski have been nominated as simulation contact persons for the LHCb experiment. In relation with this, it has been decided to enable the simplified calorimeter tests to routinely test the physics list and setup used in LHCb. o The comparison of simulation with HELIOS data (4th benchmark on target diffraction) has been finished, and a report is under preparation. o The Geant4 EM group is investigating the issue reported by ATLAS on the TileCal calorimeter on the dependency of the response on production cuts. Preliminary investigations indicate that EM multiple-scattering and its current tuning can be responsible for it, but further investigation is needed. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Generator services - Witek - Meetings: o The next meeting will be held on March 2nd and will be entirely dedicated to MCDB. - GENSER: o New generators and new version have been installed: blackmax-2.02.0, starlight-r43, herwig++-2.5.0, thepeg-1.7.0, lhapdf-5.8.5, tauola++-1.0.2b, mctester-1.24.4, vincia-1.0.24, hej-1.2. o MC generators have also been recompiled with the latest HepMC version. Still some work to do for automating the process with LCG CMT. o The work of incorporating HepMC analysis tool tests into GENSER is progressing. - MCPlots: o The system has been migrated to a machine in IT and has now been officially announced to be production service at the last LPCC minimum-bias event meeting. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Fluka - Alfredo - No report. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Geant4 - John - Releases: o Patch 1 to release 9.4 was announced last Friday, February 25th. It includes fixes for several issues: muon scattering in 'EMV' physics-lists is corrected, as an omission substituted single scattering in place of multiple scattering. Full details can be found in the release notes: http://cern.ch/geant4/support/Patch4.9.4-1.txt - Ongoing developments: o The second development release of 2011 is currently being finalised. It includes the first implementation (beta release) of light anti-ion simulation, which was requested by ALICE. Validation of anti-proton and anti-neutron simulation look promising. Comparison against anti-deuteron data is ongoing. - Validation: o Confirmed report also from ATLAS on differences with data at the level of 1-2% in lateral shower shapes for electrons, issue which was reported by CALICE in 2010. An investigation has started into the cause(s). o First comparisons undertaken of the modeling of kaon interactions (requested by LHCb). - Meetings: o The first Geant4 Technical Forum of the year will be held on Thursday March 3rd, and the work plan for 2011 will be discussed. o The next Geant4 Collaboration Workshop will be held at SLAC (Menlo Park, USA) on September 19-23rd. o A Geant4 Course will take place at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory/RSICC (Tennessee, USA) on March 7-11th. o 1st Geant4 Australian School and User Workshop will take place at the University of Wollongong (Wollongong, Australia) on April 11-16th. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== Garfield - Rob - Schools: o The "RD51 simulation school" took place at the technical training centre at CERN from 19/1 to 23/1: 23 participants; the program included hands-on practice in (1) calculating avalanches in GEMs, estimating ion feedback (2) calculating signals in Micromegas detectors, with the electronics processing (3) making hydrodynamic models of discharges. o The "Excellent School" took place from 31/1 to 10/2, involving virtually all detector groups at CERN; the gas-detector simulation group took care of the daily introductory lectures in the first week and ran simulations for GEMs, MDTs and electron transport (twice daily). - These schools were much appreciated by the participants. The atmosphere was conducive to making friends and establishing contacts; most participants probably got a feeling for what is on the market. A lot of effort has been put into preparing the programme. Several more such events are on the horizon: - 16-18/3: gas and photo detectors - 4, 11 and 18/3: secondary school "master classes" - 15-22/5: EIRO. - Paper on micro-megas transparencies being submitted. - M.Tsagri working on calculation of the drift-properties/diffusion for a variety of gas mixtures, in the context of the GOSSIP project for the ATLAS upgrade. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ==== AOB Next meeting scheduled for April 19th.