Animating collider processes with Event-time-frame Format

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new event-time-frame format for visualizing high-energy physics collider processes, enabling more effective animations and data exchange for scientific visualization and outreach.

Contribution

It presents a novel event-time-frame format for animation data exchange, enhancing visualization of collider processes and supporting scientific communication.

Findings

Developed a framework converting HEP event records into 3D animations.

Proposed an event-time-frame format for animation data exchange.

Code and web service available for public use.

Abstract

High Energy Physics processes, such as hard scattering, parton shower, and hadronization, occur at colliders around the world, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. The various steps are also components within corresponding Monte-Carlo simulations. They are usually considered to occur in an instant and displayed in MC simulations as intricate paths hard-coded with the HepMC format. We recently developed a framework to convert HEP event records into online 3D animations, aiming for visual Monte-Carlo studies and science popularization, where the most difficult parts are about designing an event timeline and particles' movement. As a by-product, we propose here an event-time-frame format for animation data exchanging and persistence, which is potentially helpful in other visualization works. The code is maintained at https://github.com/lyazj/hepani, and the web service is available at https://ppnp.pku.edu.cn/hepani/index.html.