MC-TESTER: a universal tool for comparisons of Monte Carlo predictions for particle decays in high energy physics

Abstract

Theoretical predictions in high energy physics are routinely provided in the form of Monte Carlo generators. Comparisons of predictions from different programs and/or different initialization set-ups are often necessary. MC-TESTER can be used for such tests of decays of intermediate states (particles or resonances) in a semi-automated way. Our test consists of two steps. Different Monte Carlo programs are run; events with decays of a chosen particle are searched, decay trees are analysed and appropriate information is stored. Then, at the analysis step, a list of all found decay modes is defined and branching ratios are calculated for both runs. Histograms of all scalar Lorentz-invariant masses constructed from the decay products are plotted and compared for each decay mode found in both runs. For each plot a measure of the difference of the distributions is calculated and its maximal value over all histograms for each decay channel is printed in a summary table. As an example of MC-TESTER application, we include a test with the tau lepton decay Monte Carlo generators, TAUOLA and PYTHIA. The HEPEVT (or LUJETS) common block is used as exclusive source of information on the generated events.

Comments: Version as published in Computer Physics Communications, 157(2004) 1, pp 39-62