This is the new repository for the STARlight Monte Carlo, which simulates ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic heavy ions. It simulates two-photon and coherent and incoherent photoproduction of vector mesons. It also includes an interface to DPMJet to be able to simulate other, general photoproductio reactions.

The code was described in STARlight: A Monte Carlo simulation program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions by Spencer R. Klein, Joakim Nystrand, Janet Seger,Yuri Gorbunov and Joey Butterworth, Computer Physics Communications, 212, 258 (2017) also available at arXiv:1607.03838.

The following instructions illustrates the procedure to install and run STARlight in a *nix based environment:

1. Download the code package from GitHub to the desired location. You can either download the latest release on GitHub or Clone the repository into your desired location - e.g. Desktop as shown below:

   cd ~/Desktop
   git clone https://github.com/STARlightsim/STARlight.git
   

2. Switch into the folder where STARlight has just downloaded - Desktop/STARlight

   cd ~/Desktop/STARlight
   

3. Create an installation directory and switch to this directory - e.g. build

   mkdir build
   cd ~/Desktop/STARlight/build
   

4. Setup this installation directory with cmake. Note: Ensure that you are in the installation directory, and that you have cmake installed.

   cmake ~/Desktop/STARlight
   

5. Compile the code using either make or gmake

   (g)make
   

6. This compilation will produce an executable: starlight in the installation directory. Confirm this before you proceed.

7. Setup the desired running condition in the input file: slight.in. Ensure that you have a slight.in file in the installation directory - build - before you run the executable. The easiest way to setup slight.in is to start with a test file and edit as described here. But For your first simulation, you can use the default slight.in as shown below:

   cp ~/Desktop/STARlight/config/slight.in ~/Desktop/STARlight/build
   

8. Run the simulation:

   ./starlight
   

9. The output will be found in the installation directory with the default name: slight.out. This name can change depending on the basefilename set in your slight.in. For example, if your basefilename is slightvoppPb_lhc, your output file will be named as slightvoppPb_lhc.out in the installation directory.

10. Extra on setting up slight.in: There are a few test files in the config folder. If these test files will be used, they must be renamed to slight.in and moved or copied to the installation directory: build. These files can also be edited to suit the simulation conditions desired by the user. Useful comments on the role of different parameters can be found in these test files and more detailed information on the parameters can be found in the PDF documentation

To obtain output in the HEPMC3 format, the CERN HEPMC3 module must first be installed on the user's computer/machine.

The Official source tarball for installation of the CERN HEPMC3 module can be found here

After unpacking the source tarball, compile, build and install the HEPMC3 package into the desired_installation_path following the instructions here.

Please take note of the desired_installation_path where you installed HEPMC3, as you would need this location to link HEPMC3 to STARlight.

To compile STARlight with HEPMC3 output enabled use:

cmake /pathto/starlight -DENABLE_HEPMC3=ON -DHepMC3_DIR=/pathto/hepmc3/hepmc3-install

For example: if your desired_installation_path is ~/Desktop/STARLIGHT/HepMC3-3.2.5/build, and your present working directory is the STARlight build directory, then use:

cmake .. -DENABLE_HEPMC3=ON -DHepMC3_DIR=~/Desktop/STARLIGHT/HepMC3-3.2.5/build/