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README of the LACE package

Contact: John Back (J.J.Back@warwick.ac.uk)

Introduction

This package (Lpc Algorithm in a C++ Environment) is a C++ implementation of the local principal curve (Lpc) algorithm described in Eur. Phys. J. C (2014) 74:2832, also available on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6059. It is based on the R-code package "LPCM" http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/LPCM/index.html, written by Jochen Einbeck and Ludger Evers.

This software takes a collection of data points and tries to find their local principal curves. Each point is represented as an "LpcHit" with N-dimensional co-ordinates (x,y,z,...) and a weight (e.g. energy or charge). Each collection of hits (data point cloud) is stored in a so-called "LpcEvent" pointer. The curves, feature points and any clustering information can then be retrieved from each LpcEvent.

Further online documentation is available at http://universityofwarwick.github.io/LACE

[DOI] (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11708)

Building the code

The package only depends on Eigen, the C++ template library for linear algebra: http://eigen.tuxfamily.org. Since Eigen only contains header files, there is no need to "install" it; only the Eigen header-file directory needs to be present.

This software can also use ROOT, a general purpose C++ data analysis framework (http://root.cern.ch), for input and output files, and for finding specific features in the principal curves. However, using ROOT is not required nor mandatory.

Use the configure script to set various compiler options ("configure --help" lists the available options), then build using make:

$ ./configure
$ make

If successful, this should create a shared library lib/libLACE.so as well as the binary program bin/LACEMain, which is based on the example LACEMain.cc file in the base LACE directory.

The file pathlib.sh gives an example of setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to include the LACE shared library.

Running the code

The example program bin/LACEMain can be used to run the LACE code. It takes one extra argument on the command line, which specifies the name of the Lpc parameter file

$ cd example
$ ../bin/LACEMain mupPars.txt

An example of ten 770 MeV neutrino to muon-proton events is provided in the mup770MeV.txt file, which is text based and contains the following lines:

NumberOfEvents NumberOfDimensions
EventNumber1 NumberOfHits1
HitX1 HitX2 HitX3 HitWeight
Other hits...
EventNumber2 NumberOfHits2
HitX1 HitX2 HitX3 HitWeight
Other hits...
etc...

A description of the lpc parameters are given below, with suggested default values given in parenthesis:

infile          Filename of the input file
informat        Format for the input file (text or root)
outfile         Filename of the output file
outformat       Format for the output file (text or root)
 
kernelwidth     Value of the lpc scaled kernel width (0.05)
stepsize        Scaled step size for the lpc (0.05)
npoints         Required number of lpc points (250)
penalisation    Angle penalisation factor (2.0)
eigenratio      Minimum 2nd/1st eigenvalue ratio for possible branching points (0.4)
boundary        Boundary condition for delaying convergence in the tails (0.005)
convergence     Convergence level for the Lpc (1e-6)
branchlevel     Number of possible branching generation levels (0 = none, default)
gapsize         Scaled size of the gap (gapsize*stepsize) to start finding a new branch (1.5)

peakfinder      Select the peak finder method: 0 = none, 1 = simple (default if not using ROOT), 
                                               2 = TSpectrum from ROOT (default if using ROOT)

cosanglecut     Minimum value for finding features in the 1-|cosAngle| distribution (0.01)
minpeakfrac     Minimum fractional height for the next feature peak w.r.t the previous peak (0.01)
peakdiffsq      Squared-distance limit for checking if lpc feature peaks overlap (3.0)

clustering      Set the clustering method: 0 = none, 1 = method in paper (default), 
		                           2 = all hits put into 1 cluster

dobranchvtx     Enable (1) or disable (0 = default) vertexing and clustering for branches
minvtxrescut    Minimum selection cut value for hit-to-lpc residuals for vertexing (20.0)

convexhull      Minimum value of the convex hull ratio d_transverse/d_longitudinal for showers (0.12)
showerres       Minimum threshold for hit-to-lpc residuals for showers (20.0)
showerresratio  Minimum hit-to-lpc residual ratio for showers (0.3)
showerresfrac   Minimum fraction of residuals that need to be above the shower threshold (0.9)

firstevent      Integer specifying the first event (usually this is set to 0)
lastevent       Integer specifying the last event (-1 means process all available events)

If "firstevent" and "lastevent" are not set, then all events found in the input file are processed.

This software supports finding branches within lpc curves ("branchlevel > 0"), but this is still in the experimental stage. Feedback regarding this feature is desired and indeed welcome.

Note that all integer values used and returned by functions and variables follow the C++ convention and start at zero, except for branches. The integer index number of the main curve is nominally set to zero. This implies that the indices of branches start at one (branch = 0 means the main curve that has index 0). Also, the branch generation number starts at 1 (generation of zero means no branches, or just the main curve).

Code documentation

Automatic code documentation can be generated using the Doxygen system (http://www.doxygen.org). Simply run doxygen

$ doxygen

in the main LACE directory to create a doxygen sub-directory containing a html-based interface to the description of classes and all of their functions and variables (doxygen/html/index.html).

License

This software is distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1, (Aug 17 2003). See LICENSE_1_0.txt (optionally the original at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) for details.

Authors and contributors

The main author of the C++ version is John Back.

Other contributors to this work are:

  • Gary Barker
  • Steve Boyd
  • Daniel Brunt
  • Jochen Einbeck
  • Ludger Evers
  • Martin Haigh
  • Harmanjeet Khera
  • Ben Morgan
  • Ben Oakley
  • Yorck Ramachers
  • Dan Roythorne
  • Jamie Wynn