NPPS Leadership Team

[Torre Wenaus <wenaus AT gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I was asked (very late) to provide input to the nuclear part of the FWP (no such request on the HEP side). Here's what I have, comments on my errors and/or gaping holes are welcome.

  Torre

The Nuclear and Particle Physics Software (NPPS) Group within the Physics Department develops scientific software for experiments across BNL's nuclear and high energy physics programs, developing and promoting common software solutions and sharing of expertise, as well as tailoring solutions to particular experimental needs.

NPPS [nuclear] personnel: Dmitry Arkhipkin, Amol Jaikar, Kolja Kauder, Victor Perevoztchikov, Maxim Potekhin, Dmitri Smirnov, Jason Webb, Torre Wenaus

Technical Progress in FY2020 and Expected Progress in FY2021

• Continuing to lead the development and support of online and offline databases for STAR, extending also to the development and support of collaborative database tools for STAR and other experiments including shift management tools, phone book, run log, and Drupal based collaboration website. 

• Developed the geant4star full simulation for STAR with a particular focus on using Geant4 to accurately model the forward calorimetry in the STAR upgrade. During FY21 geant4star is expected to be completed and enter production.

• Development and support of STAR software infrastructure and production processing, including code management, build and test tools, software releases and their validation, and production tools and operation. Planned and executed STAR’s transition from CVS to git (GitHub) based code management.

• Continuing to provide core software expertise and support for the STAR offline software, with modernizations including migrating to 64 bit and ROOT 6.

• Leadership in designing and developing a data & analysis preservation (DAP) plan and infrastructure for PHENIX (leveraging community tools where possible), including document repository, data repository, a new website gathering information important to DAP, and a container based approach to preserving usable software and analysis workflows.

• Leadership in developing sPHENIX tracking software based on the ACTS community tracking software project (subcontract to ORNL)

• Developing with sPHENIX solutions to their software and computing needs, leveraging prior work and existing expertise within the NPPS group. Includes conditions database, leveraging Belle II work, and distributed computing, leveraging ATLAS work.

• Leadership in developing and supporting the eic-smear fast simulation, the basis for most simulation work contributing to the EIC Yellow Report. In FY21, with EIC simulation needs transitioning to full simulation supporting detector proposals, full simulation will become part of the effort via the eAST project (below).

• Created jointly with JLab the eAST (eA Simulation Tookit) simulation project as an EIC simulation effort common across the (proto)collaborations. The project’s initial focus is on incorporating the proto-collaboration detectors into the latest Geant4 and exploiting its capabilities for integrating modular detector regions at different levels of detail. The early reception of eAST on the part of the proto-collaborations has been positive.

• Leadership in common EIC software, via co-convenership of the Software Working Group of the EIC Users Group.

Anticipated progress 2022-23

• Continuing support for STAR databases, and leveraging them increasingly broadly as database and collaborative tools applied to other experiments.

• Supporting and further developing the newly commissioned geant4star simulation for STAR.

• Leverage STAR’s new GitHub based software to further modernize its software development, test and deployment workflows.

• Build on the PHENIX data and analysis preservation work done thus far to bring complete PHENIX analyses into the DAP infrastructure, and begin to leverage the PHENIX work for other experiments.

• Complete the ACTS based sPHENIX tracking software

• Develop and deploy a conditions database for sPHENIX leveraging NPPS’s leadership in the Belle II conditions database.

• Develop and deploy workload, workflow and data management tools and services for sPHENIX, leveraging NPPS’s leadership in ATLAS distributed computing.

• Support sPHENIX’s readiness for datataking and commissioning, transitioning additional NPPS nuclear physics effort to sPHENIX, including software infrastructure and production processing

• Continuing a leading role in EIC simulation development supporting the EIC detector collaboration(s), both in fast (eic-smear) and full (eAST) simulation, and extending down the offline processing chain (digitization, reconstruction, analysis) as and when EIC needs dictate.

--

-- Torre Wenaus, BNL NPPS Group, ATLAS Experiment

-- BNL 510A 1-222 | 631-681-7892 |  wenaus AT gmail.com | npps.bnl.gov | wenaus.com

-- NPPS Mattermost room: https://chat.sdcc.bnl.gov/npps/channels/town-square