DDG4 A Simulation Framework based on the DD4hep Detector Description Toolkit

The detector description is an essential component that has to be used to analyse and simulate data resulting from particle collisions in high energy physics experiments. Based on the DD4hep detector description toolkit a flexible and data driven simulation framework was designed using the Geant4 tool-kit. We present this framework and describe the guiding requirements and the architectural design, which was strongly driven by ease of use. The goal was, given an existing detector description, to simulate the detector response to particle collisions in high energy physics experiments with minimal effort, but not impose restrictions to support enhanced or improved behaviour.

Starting from the ROOT based geometry implementation used by DD4hep an automatic conversion mechanism to Geant4 was developed. The physics response and the mechanism to input particle data from generators was highly formalized and can be instantiated on demand using known factory patterns. A palette of components to model the detector response is provided by default, but improved or more sophisticated components may easily be added using the factory pattern. Only the final configuration of the instantiated components has to be provided by end-users using either C++ or python scripting or an XML based description.