An Interactive and Comprehensive Working Environment for High-Energy Physics Software with Python and Jupyter Notebooks

Today's analyses for high-energy physics (HEP) experiments involve processing a large amount of data with highly specialized algorithms. The contemporary workflow from recorded data to final results is based on the execution of small scripts - often written in Python or ROOT macros which call c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of physics. Conference series Vol. 898; no. 7; pp. 72020 - 72026
Main Authors Braun, N, Hauth, T, Pulvermacher, C, Ritter, M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bristol IOP Publishing 01.10.2017
Subjects
Algorithms
High energy physics
Physics
Programming environments
Programming languages
Software
Web services
Workflow
Working conditions
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Summary:Today's analyses for high-energy physics (HEP) experiments involve processing a large amount of data with highly specialized algorithms. The contemporary workflow from recorded data to final results is based on the execution of small scripts - often written in Python or ROOT macros which call complex compiled algorithms in the background - to perform fitting procedures and generate plots. During recent years interactive programming environments, such as Jupyter, became popular. Jupyter allows to develop Python-based applications, so-called notebooks, which bundle code, documentation and results, e.g. plots. Advantages over classical script-based approaches is the feature to recompute only parts of the analysis code, which allows for fast and iterative development, and a web-based user frontend, which can be hosted centrally and only requires a browser on the user side. In our novel approach, Python and Jupyter are tightly integrated into the Belle II Analysis Software Framework (basf2), currently being developed for the Belle II experiment in Japan. This allows to develop code in Jupyter notebooks for every aspect of the event simulation, reconstruction and analysis chain. These interactive notebooks can be hosted as a centralized web service via jupyterhub with docker and used by all scientists of the Belle II Collaboration. Because of its generality and encapsulation, the setup can easily be scaled to large installations.
ISSN:1742-6588
1742-6596
DOI:10.1088/1742-6596/898/7/072020