Running Madgraph on the NICADD cluster for PHYS 474/790

What is MadGraph?

MadGraph 5 is software that simulates collisions of particles, including the kind of very high-energy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron, or electron-positron collisions. It is seamlessly integrated with an event generator, and with a program called Pythia for parton showering and hadronization, and with a choice of detector simulators (PGS or Delphes). MadGraph 5 is written in Python.

Where can I download MadGraph, find documentation, register as a MadGraph user, read answers to common questions from other users, ask my own questions, and much, much more?

The MadGraph homepage is at: http://madgraph.phys.ucl.ac.be/ with a mirror here: http://madgraph.hep.uiuc.edu/index.html. Many of these features, including downloading the software, require that you register. For now you don't have to, but if you plan to do something serious with MadGraph, you should probably eventually register at one of those web sites.

Do I need to download MadGraph to run it?

If you want to run it on the NICADD cluster, no. It is already installed and ready to run. The installation comes with Pythia, PGS, and Delphes already, so you should have everything needed to compute cross-sections, simulate events, and interpret the results. Big thanks to Sergey Uzunyan for getting this set up.

What one-time things do I need to do to prepare to run MadGraph on the NICADD cluster?

How would I change my configuration file?

If you want to change your choice of editor or browser for work within Madgraph, you should edit your configuration file by, for example,

(Substitute your favorite editor in place of pico.) You can change the choice of editor on line 37. To change the browser that Madgraph will attempt to use, uncomment line 41 and change "None" to whatever you want. If you want to revert to the defaults, you can do

How do I make Xwindows work from a Windows machine?

Tip from Michael McEvoy:
If you try "open index.html" and have get an error message like this:

"The application 'firefox' lost its connection to the display localhost:18.0; most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/distroyed the application"

Try this:
Close firefox.exe (assuming that is your configuration)
Open an X forwarding program (I use Xming (free download))

Use a program to connect to nicadd server (I use Putty (free download))

login to nicadd (enter password)

How do I run MadGraph?

Now what?

At the MadGraph prompt, you can run a tutorial, by typing:

There is also a useful command:

We will pick things up here in class. For notes on that, click here: http://www.niu.edu/spmartin/madgraph/madtutor.html

What if I want to run MadGraph on my own computer, instead of on the NICADD cluster?

You can download the software, but this requires registration at the MadGraph website. When installing, one possible issue is that MadGraph requires Python 2.6, and doesn't work with Python 3. Also, you will need to install ExRootAnalysis, Pythia, PGS, and/or Delphes separately, although this can be done from the MadGraph prompt. To do so, you issue the commands:

Depending on your computer's setup, installing MadGraph on it can either be easy or tricky.

Next: www.niu.edu/spmartin/madgraph/madtutor.html