Fermilab

Tools for the Collaboration

Access to REDTOP resources

All tools and documents available to the REDTOP Collaboration reside on Fermilab’s computing systems. Services of common use are Redmine, Sharepoint, and DocDb. Redmine git server will also be used as software repository.

In order to access those tools, one is required to have a Services account at Fermilab. Regular Fermilab’s users (those with a valid Fermilab ID) most likely already have a Services account (which is the same as the email) account. Otherwise, they can request a new one.

External collaborators (those without a valid Fermilab ID) may request a Services account using REDTOP as Affiliation by going to this link. Please, fill-in all the information being requested. The following tips might be helpful:

  • In the drop-down listbox, indicate REDTOP as Experiment/Collaboration
  • In the Fermilab contact name (first and last) input field, insert REDTOP’s contact person (ask your P.I. for that name)
  • In the Fermilab contact email input field, indicate the email of of REDTOP’s contact person (again, ask your P.I. for that name)
  • In the Fermilab contact phone input field, indicate the phone extension of REDTOP’s contact person
  • In the institution point of contact indicate the name of the P.I. of your group.

VPN on Fermilab’s intranet

In some cases, the services residing on Fermilab’s central computer systems is on intranet and it requires that your computer would establish a VPN with Fermilab network. In case you do not have one installed, follow the instructions below:

  • Go to Fermilab VPN page and complete the login form. Follow the instruction for installing Cisco Anyconnect Secure Mobility Client for your system;
  • Alternatively, a copy of that software is available for download from REDTOP’s file repository. Use the Windows 7, the OSX or the 32-bit / 64-bit Linux version, according to your operating system. Run the setup and install it on your computer.
  • Launch the client: a window with the title “Cisco Anyconnect Secure Mobility Client“ will pop-up. In the “VPN:” box type: vpn.fnal.gov
  • Hit the connect button and login into Fermilab’s VPN network. The client will inform you if the connection was successful or not.

File repository

Most of the templates for common documents used for REDTOP can be found in our Redmine file repository. They can be freely downloaded upon logon with your Services account.

Tools for editing and publishing

Although word-processing programs (such as Microsoft Office and LibreOffice) are commonly used for editing and publishing small documents, Texis still the de facto standard for larger documents and articles. We encourage the use of Lyx throughout the collaboration. The latter comes prepackaged with Tex for all platforms of common use. A version of Lyx for your operating system can be downloaded from the program official website. A list of Lyx templates for common documents used by the collaboration can be found in REDTOP’s Redmine file repository. They require no special Tex classes or sty files (unless specified in the template itself) and can be used with the out-of-the-box installations of Lyx/Texlive/Mactex. One can also generate a plain latex file from Lyx using the menu sequence: File->Export->Latex in the case one wishes to proceed with straight Tex compilers.

Internal documents

All documents related to REDTOP are stored in a doc-db database. The members of the collaboration are authorized to access the documents and, eventually, to add new ones via this link.

Software simulations

REDTOP has two software frameworks for developing the code for simulations and physics and detector studies: Slic + lcsim and Ilcroot. They have different scope and intents. The event generation is performed separately with a framework called GenieHad. The events generated with GenieHad can be fed into either Slic or Ilcroot without any modification.

These two packages have been developed at SLAC for the ILC and the HPS project. The original Slic documentation and files can be accessed from the official pages at SLAC. The Slic program is written in C++ and it is an interface to Geant4 with the addition of new features like an extended geometry language and support for LCIO output file format. It is used to generate hits inside the a specified via an extended GDML geometry. The original lcsim program can be accesses from the org.lcsim pages. The code is written in java and it is used for the reconstruction and the analysis of the hits generated by Slic. Slic and lcsim are excellent tools for prototyping new detectors or whenever a quick simulation is required. It is extremely flexible and easy to use, although it does not have the power and the speed of Ilcroot.

slic and lcsim

Please check the slic and lcsim web pages for information on how to download and access the code.

Ilcroot

Ilcroot was initially derived from the ALICE’s experiment software framework: AliRoot. Ilcroot, having  been adopted by several older experiments, is publicly available at Fermilab. It is a very powerful package which includes all steps of simulation, digitization, reconstruction and analysis. However, it does not have the flexibility and ease-of-use which slic+lcsim have. Therefore it is intended mostly for simulations once the detector layout has been frozen or when very detailed studies need to be performed. The Ilcroot framework with the detector layout appropriate for REDTOP can be found at this link.

GenieHad

GenieHad is a framework for simulating with high details the scattering of hadronic particles. It is based on the original Genie framework but it relies on external event generators for modeling the hadronic interaction. At present, the source code is not publicly available since it is still under development. However, the binary for generating events on a Windows 7 platform can be downloaded from the GenieHad Web page.

Software Simulations on Windows Computers

The entire simulation chain GenieHad+Slic can be installed on a Windows 7 computer and run without the need to modify the source code or to compile it. The event generation with GenieHad can be configured with 2 text file (a .txt macro + and an .xml file) while the Slic simulations require only one text file. In both cases, the geometry of the detector is specified with a .gdml file. The instructions for installing and running the simulation in Windows can be found at this link.