PYTHIA 8
Welcome to PYTHIA - The Lund Monte Carlo!
PYTHIA 8 is the successor to PYTHIA 6, rewritten from scratch in C++.
With the release of PYTHIA 8.1 it now becomes the official "current"
PYTHIA version, although PYTHIA 6.4 will be supported in parallel
with it for some time to come. Specifically, the new version has not
yet been enough tested and tuned for it to have reached the same level
of reliability as the older one. This testing will only happen if
people begin to work with the program, however, which is why we
encourage a gradual transition to the new version, starting now.
There are some new physics features in PYTHIA 8.1, that would make
use of it more attractive, but also some topics still missing, where
6.4 would have to be used. Further, many obsolete features will not
be carried over, so for some backwards compatibility studies again
6.4 would be the choice.
Documentation
On these webpages you will find the up-to-date manual for PYTHIA 8.1.
Use the left-hand index to navigate this documentation of program
elements, especially of all possible program settings. All parameters
are provided with sensible default values, however, so you need only
change those of relevance to your particular study, such as choice of
beams, processes and phase space cuts. The pages also contain a fairly
extensive overview of all methods available to the user, e.g. to study
the produced events. What is lacking on these webpages is an overview,
on the one hand, and an in-depth physics description, on the other.
The overview can be found in the attached PDF file
A Brief Introduction
to PYTHIA 8.1
T. Sjöstrand, S. Mrenna and P. Skands, arXiv:0710.3820,
to appear in Computer Physics Communications.
You are strongly recommended to read this summary when you
start out to learn how to use PYTHIA 8.1.
For the physics description we refer to the complete
PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
T. Sjöstrand, S. Mrenna and P. Skands, JHEP05 (2006) 026,
which in detail describes the physics (largely) implemented also in
PYTHIA 8, and also provides a more extensive bibliography than found
here.
When you use PYTHIA 8.1, you should therefore cite both, e.g. like
T. Sjöstrand, S. Mrenna and P. Skands, JHEP05 (2006) 026,
arXiv:0710.3820.
Program Authors and Licence
Main author: Torbjörn Sjöstrand
Department of Theoretical Physics, Lund University,
SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden
phone: + 46 - 46 - 222 48 16, e-mail: torbjorn@thep.lu.se
Author: Stephen Mrenna
Computing Division, Simulations Group,
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,
MS 234, Batavia, IL 60510, USA
phone: + 1 - 630 - 840 - 2556, e-mail: mrenna@fnal.gov
Author: Peter Skands
CERN/PH, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland, and
Theoretical Physics Department,
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,
MS 106, Batavia, IL 60510, USA
phone: + 41 - 22 - 767 24 59, e-mail: skands@fnal.gov
Makefiles, configure scripts and HepMC interface by Mikhail Kirsanov.
Conversion of XML files to PHP ones by Ben Lloyd.
Simple Makefile for Win32/NMAKE by Bertrand Bellenot.
Extended Higgs sector partly implemented by Marc Montull.
Parts of charm and bottom decay tables courtesy DELPHI and
LHCb collaborations.
PYTHIA 8 is licensed under the
GNU General Public Licence
version 2.
Please respect the
MCnet Guidelines
for Event Generator Authors and Users.
The program and the documentation is
Copyright © 2008 Torbjörn Sjöstrand