CutLang: A Particle Physics Analysis Description Language and Runtime Interpreter

Abstract

We present CutLang, an analysis description language and runtime interpreter for high energy collider physics data analyses. An analysis description language is a declerative domain specific language that can express all elements of a data analysis in an easy and unambiguous way. A full-fledged human readable analysis description language, incorporating logical and mathematical expressions, would eliminate many programming difficulties and errors, consequently allowing the scientist to focus on the goal, but not on the tool. In this paper, we discuss the guiding principles and scope of the CutLang language, implementation of the CutLang runtime interpreter and the CutLang framework, and demonstrate an example of top pair reconstruction.

Reinterpretation of LHC Results for New Physics: Status and recommendations after Run 2

“…CheckMATE [95,96], MadAnalysis 5 [18,19,97,98], GAMBIT's ColliderBit [12,[99][100][101] and Rivet [48,49] (and hence Contur [61], which interprets Rivet analysis outputs). There are also two interpreters of the recently developed domain-specific Analysis Description Language (ADL) [51,52]: adl2tnm [20] and CutLang [53,54]. For LLP searches, there is no standard framework yet, but a number of recast codes have been made available via the "LLP Recasting Repository".…”

“…In this approach, description of the analysis components is decoupled from analysis frameworks, but the analysis can be run by any framework capable of interpreting the language, which makes the approach commonly usable by experimentalists and phenomenologists. Considerable progress has been made in developing analysis description languages and interpreter frameworks [20,53,54]. We also note nascent efforts [52] to develop a single community framework for BSM collider analysis recasting.…”

“…adl2tnm [20] and CutLang [53,54] parse and run analysis logic written in the form of the recently developed domain-specific ADL [51,52]. In the plain-text ADL files, object, variable and event selection definitions are separated into blocks that follow a keyword-value structure, where keywords specify analysis concepts and operations.…”

CutLang: A Particle Physics Analysis Description Language and Runtime Interpreter

“…CutLang framework also includes many predefined functions that are standard in an analysis, such as the invariant mass of particles, or angular distance measures between particles. The complete list can be found in [1]. Moreover, external user functions for calculating complex variables can be incorporated into the framework.…”

“…In this note, we present CutLang, a complete ADL, and a runtime interpreter for easily writing and performing collider analyses [1]. A simple top quark pair reconstruction analysis is also shown as an example to demonstrate the implementation of the CutLang ADL and to illustrate the advantages of the ADL approach.…”