Les Houches Accords

The Les Houches Accords are agreements between physicists on a universal interface between the matrix element programs and the Monte Carlo method programs, enabling physicists to choose between different types of each program easily. The Accords also make it easier to generate pdf cross sections for events. The accord was initially formed in 2001, although later expanded, at a conference in Les Houches, France.

In experimental high energy physics, several levels of computing are used to simulate data runs, including programs that generate matrix elements and Monte Carlo methods. However, there are several programs for each of these tasks, such as CompHEP and MadGraph to generate matrix elements. Pythia and Herwig are examples of popular Monte Carlo programs. Depending on specific properties of the particle decay that physicists are interested in, they may desire to use a certain programs for these tasks, but before the Les Houches Accords, there was no general interface for communicating between the programs.

ee also

* Event generator

Sources

[http://home.fnal.gov/~mrenna/041207_pythia_tutorial/07_041207_pythia_tutorial_TS_2_leshouches2.pdf] ] General overview of Les Houches Accords

[http://theory.fnal.gov/mc4bsm/slides/richardson_mc4bsm.pdf] More general information

The actual paper: E. Boos et al., in Proceedings of the Workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders, Les Houches, France 21 May - 1 June 2001 [hep-ph/0109068]