The LHCb Starterkit lessons

These are the lessons historically taught during the LHCb Starterkit. These lessons focus on LHCb software from Runs 1 and 2. For Run 3, the software changed a lot and a new set of Starterkit lessons was written. If you’d like to join the next workshop, visit the website to find out when that will how and how to sign up.

If you’d just like to learn about how to use the LHCb software, read on!

Contents:

• First Analysis Steps
  • Pre-workshop checklist
  • Goals of the course
  • Physics at LHCb
    • The reconstruction
    • Building decay candidates
    • Building more complex decays
  • The LHCb data flow
  • Changes to the data flow in Run 2
  • The analysis flow and analysis preservation
    • Getting data files
    • Useful high energy physics analysis tools
    • Analysis Preservation
  • An introduction to LHCb Software
  • Finding data in the Bookkeeping
  • Downloading a file from the grid
  • Interactively exploring a DST
  • Running a minimal DaVinci job locally
  • Fun with LoKi Functors
  • TupleTools and branches
  • How do I use DecayTreeFitter?
  • Analysis Productions
    • Monitoring productions
    • Creating your own production
  • Running DaVinci on the grid
  • Splitting a job into subjobs
  • More Ganga
  • Storing large files on EOS
  • Developing LHCb Software
  • LHCb data flow in Run 3
    • LHCb upgrade
    • Upgrade of the LHCb trigger system
    • Offline data processing
  • Asking good questions
  • Early career, gender and diversity
  • Contribute to this lesson
• Second Analysis Steps
  • Using git to develop LHCb software
  • Building your own decay
    • The Selection Framework
    • A Historical Approach
    • Modern Selection Framework
  • What to do when something fails
  • Run a different stripping line on simulated data
  • Replace a mass hypothesis
  • Reuse particles from a decay tree
  • The simulation framework
    • What is Gauss?
    • Choosing your Gauss Version
    • Which option files to use and how to run Gauss
    • Running Gauss and create a generator-only sample
    • Make an nTuple
    • Controlling the decay: DecFiles
    • Modifying the decay
    • Advanced: Modifying the decay
    • 3+ multi-body decays
    • Cocktail decays
    • Final state radiation
    • Changing particle masses / lifetimes/ widths
    • Finding Constants Used in an Existing MC Sample (Masses/Lifetimes/etc)
    • Why fast simulation is crucial
  • HLT intro
    • Add trigger information to your ntuple
    • Exploring a TCK: List of trigger lines
    • Add trigger information to your ntuple, continued
    • Add TISTOS information to your ntuple
    • Exploring a TCK: Properties of trigger lines
  • TisTos DIY
  • Scripting Ganga
    • Defining jobs with scripts
    • Adding helpers functions
  • Managing files in Ganga
  • Advanced Dirac
    • GangaTasks
    • Alternative Backends - DIRAC (Python bugged)
    • Alternative Backends - DIRAC (DaVinci)
    • Alternative Backends - Condor
  • Containers and running legacy code
• Self guided lessons
  • Batch submission using HTCondor
    • Submitting a simple job
    • More submit file options
    • Using the queue command
    • System architecture
    • Other useful resources
  • Creating a grid proxy without LbScripts
    • Installation
    • Getting the required files and certificates
    • Creating a proxy
    • Managing the proxy
• Contributing
  • Getting Started
  • Dependencies
    • Contributor Code of Conduct
    • Instructional Material
    • Software

External links:

• HSF analysis essentials
  • An introduction to Python
  • Advanced Python tutorial
  • Introducing the shell
  • UNIX shell
  • Analysis automation with Snakemake
  • Version control with Git
• LHCb Core documentation
• LHCb glossary