Tunes

Technically, PYTHIA parameters can be varied independently of each other, but the physical requirement of a sensible description of a set of data leads to correlations and anticorrelations between the parameters. Hence the need to produce tunes, not of one parameter at a time, but simultaneously for a group of them. A well-known (separate) such example is parton densities, where combined tunes to a wide range of data have been produced, that can then be obtained prepackaged.

Given the many PYTHIA parameters to be tuned, it is convenient to divide the task into subtasks. Firstly, if we assume jet universality, hadronization and final-state parton showers should be tuned to e^+e^- annihilation data, notably from LEP1, since this offers the cleanest environment. Secondly, with such parameters fixed, hadron collider data should be studied to pin down multiparton interactions and other further aspects, such as initial-state radiation. Ideally this would be done separately for diffractive and non-diffractive events, although it is not possible to have a clean separation. (Thirdly would come anything else, such as physics with photon beams, which involve further parameters, but that is beyond the current scope.)

The first step was taken, with a tune to LEP1 data by Hendrik Hoeth, using the Rivet + Professor framework. Starting with version 8.125 it defined the default values for hadronization parameters and timelike showers.

The situation is more complicated for hadronic interactions in general and multiparton interactions in particular, where PYTHIA 8 is more different from PYTHIA 6, and therefore more work is needed. Specifically, it is not possible to "port" a PYTHIA 6 tune to PYTHIA 8.

A first simple tune, appropriately called "Tune 1", became default starting with version 8.127. It was noted, in particular by Hendrik Hoeth, that this tune had a tension between parameters needed to describe minimum-bias and underlying-event activity. Therefore some further physics features were introduced in the code itself [Cor10a], which were made default as of 8.140. This version also included two new tunes, 2C and 2M, based on the CTEQ 6L1 and the MRST LO** PDF sets, respectively. These have been made by hand, as a prequel to complete Professor-style tunings.

The very first data to come out of the LHC showed a higher rapidity plateau than predicted for current PYTHIA 6 tunes, also for the lower energies. This may suggest some tension in the data. Two alternatives, 3C and 3M, were produced by a few brute-force changes of 2C and 2M. These were introduced in 8.140, but discontinued in 8.145 in favour of the newer 4C tune, that is based on a more serious study of some early LHC data, see [Cor10a]. Following the comparative studies in [Buc11], which independently confirmed a reasonable agreement with LHC data, tune 4C was made the default from 8.150. A variant is tune 4Cx, where the Gaussian matter profile has an x-dependent width [Cor11].

Tune 4C was the basis for many subsequent LHC tunes. Several ATLAS tunes have been included here, obtained with different PDFs and with different emphasis on minimum-bias and underlying-event data [ATL12]. These typically require LHAPDF to be linked, but this can be avoided in cases where the same PDF set is implemented internally. Also two CMS underlying-event tunes are implemented [CMS14]. The ATLAS AZ tune [ATL14] instead puts emphasis on the pT spectrum of the Z^/gamma^*0 boson.

The Monash 2013 tune [Ska14] is based on a larger set of LHC distributions. It starts out from a more careful comparison with and tuning to LEP data, and so involves several parameter changes. The PDF used is the NNPDF2.3 QCD+QED LO one with alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.130, which includes more recent data than used in the previous default, and opens up for processes with incoming photons to the hard process. It is the default starting from 8.200.

Recent tunes by the LHC collaborations are based on the Monash 2013 one. This includes the CMS tune MonashStar, or formally CUETP8M1-NNPDF2.3LO (currently unpublished). More significantly, ATLAS has produced and published a whole family for underlying-event tunes based on a major effort, including simultaneous fits of ten parameters [ATL14a]. This includes four central tunes, with four different PDF sets, and ten variations around the NNPDF2.3 QCD+QED LO central tune, grouped in five pairs of variations up and down. The publication [ATL14a] should be consulted for further details, like with what additional settings various processes have been generated, which should be respected to reap full benefit of the tunes.

Central diffraction is a recent addition to the "soft QCD" process palette, and is thus not yet included in tunes; indeed its cross section is actively zeroed. You can switch it back on after you have selected your tune, with SigmaTotal:zeroAXB = off. But note that, since the total cross section is assumed unchanged, the nondiffractive cross section is reduced and thus also the MPI machinery affected, even if effects should not be big (for a small central diffractive cross section).

Note that comparisons with data also require that other aspects agree, such as that decay chains are stopped at an agreed-on level. For instance, in the ATLAS tunes all particles with a lifetime above 10 mm are considered stable, ParticleDecays:limitTau0 = on, ParticleDecays:tau0Max = 10. We have chosen not to include this as part of the tune settings itself, since the tune as such could still be used with any other choice of stable and unstable particles.

Further comparisons have been posted on the MCPLOTS pages. They have been produced with help of the Rivet package [Buc10].

To simplify comparisons for the user, we propose to collect some of the tunes here, in a prepackaged form. Of course, in all cases it is a matter of setting values for parameters already defined elsewhere, so the tunes offer no new functionality, only a more convenient setup.

You should be aware that the evolution of the program will not guarantee complete backwards compatibility between versions. Most obviously this concerns bug fixes. But also for some other major changes, like the introduction of the new diffractive machinery, the default behaviour of old tunes has been changed retroactively. (Which should be fine for diffraction, since previous tunes were not based on data strongly influenced by diffraction.)

The setup of the tunes is special, in that the choice of a tune forces the change of several different flags, modes and parameters. Furthermore a design principle has been that it should be possible to start out from a tune and then change a few of its settings. This gives power and flexibility at the expense of requiring a more careful ordering of commands. We therefore here sketch the order in which operations are carried out.

1. The constructor of a Pythia instance will read in all settings, and initialize them with their default values.
2. At the end of this operation, the Tune:ee and Tune:pp modes (see further below) are checked. If either of them are positive the methods Settings::initTuneEE(...) and Settings::initTunePP(...), respectively, are called to overwrite the whole collection of settings in the relevant tune. Zero (or negative) means that nothing will be done. Since most pp/ppbar tunes have been made in the context of an e^+e^- one, initTunePP(...) usually calls initTuneEE(...) to provide this synchronization.
3. After the Pythia constructor all the relevant values for the default tune(s) have thus been set up.
4. You as a user can now start to overwrite the values at will, using Pythia::readFile(...) to read a configuration file, or a list of Pythia::readString(...) commands, or the lower-level Settings methods. All changes are made in the order in which the commands are encountered during the execution. A given variable can be changed multiple times, but it is the latest change that sets the current value.
5. The two Tune:ee and Tune:pp modes can also be changed in exactly the same way as described for all other settings above. Unique for them, however, is that when one of them is encountered it also initiates a call to the initTuneEE(...) or initTunePP(...) method, respectively. In such cases all settings affected by the e^+e^- or pp/ppbar tune are first reset to the default values (the -1 options) and thereafter the relevant tune is set up. Recall that initTunePP(...) in its turn is allowed to call initTuneEE(...).
6. It is possible to mix commands of type 4 and 5 in any order; it is always the last change that counts. That is, any changes you have made to variables of a tune before a Tune:ee or Tune:pp command are overwritten by it, while variables you set after will overwrite the tune values. Further, the Tune:pp command usually implies an e^+e^- tune as well. Therefore Tune:ee would rarely be used for LHC applications. As a rule, instead, you want to begin with the Tune:pp choice, and thereafter modify only a small part of its settings.
7. Needless to say, the flexibility can lead to unwanted setups if you do not exercise some discipline. It is therefore recommended that you always check the listing obtained with Pythia::settings.listChanged() to confirm that the final set of changes is the intended one.

mode  Tune:ee   (default = 7; minimum = -1; maximum = 7)
Choice of tune to e^+e^- data, mainly for the hadronization and timelike-showering aspects of PYTHIA. In the following options the settings file used to load the tune is provided after the tune number. Every tune here can then be equivalently loaded with the command include = tunes/settings.cmnd where settings.cmnd is the corresponding settings file. In the future the Tune:ee setting will be removed in favor of the include syntax.
option -1 : (tunes/Reset-ee.cmnd) reset all values that are affected by any of the e^+e^- tunes to the default values.
option 0 : no values are overwritten during the initial setup, step 2 above. Note that changing to 0 in the user code has no effect; if you want to restore the individual settings you should instead use -1.
option 1 : (tunes/OldJETSET.cmnd) the original PYTHIA 8 parameter set, based on some very old flavour studies (with JETSET around 1990) and a simple tune of alpha_strong to three-jet shapes to the new pT-ordered shower. These were the default values before version 8.125.
option 2 : (tunes/Montull2007.cmnd) a tune by Marc Montull to the LEP 1 particle composition, as published in the RPP (August 2007). No related (re)tune to event shapes has been performed, however.
option 3 : (tunes/Hoeth2009.cmnd) a tune to a wide selection of LEP1 data by Hendrik Hoeth within the Rivet + Professor framework, both to hadronization and timelike-shower parameters (June 2009). These were the default values starting from version 8.125.
option 4 : (tunes/Skands2013.cmnd) a tune to LEP data by Peter Skands, by hand, both to hadronization and timelike-shower parameters (September 2013). Note the use of the CMW convention for the shower alpha_s scale.
option 5 : (tunes/Fischer2013-1.cmnd) first tune to LEP data by Nadine Fischer (September 2013), based on the default flavour-composition parameters. Input is event shapes (ALEPH and DELPHI), identified particle spectra (ALEPH), multiplicities (PDG), and B hadron fragmentation functions (ALEPH).
option 6 : (tunes/Fischer2013-2.cmnd) second tune to LEP data by Nadine Fischer (September 2013). Similar to the first one, but event shapes are weighted up significantly, and multiplicites not included.
option 7 : (tunes/Monash2013-ee.cmnd) the Monash 2013 tune by Peter Skands at al. [Ska14], to both e^+e^- and pp/pbarp data.

mode  Tune:preferLHAPDF   (default = 0; minimum = 0; maximum = 3)
Tunes made by experimental collaborations typically use the LHAPDF package to obtain their PDF values, and so PYTHIA must be built accordingly. See the PDF documentation for more information. For PDFs implemented natively in PYTHIA it is possible to use the respective tunes, without having to use LHAPDF, if you set Tune:preferLHAPDF = 0. Alternatively, setting Tune:preferLHAPDF = 3 will use the internal PYTHIA interpolation of LHAPDF6 PDF grids, so while the LHAPDF6 library is not needed, the PDF grid is.
option 0 : Use the internal PYTHIA PDFs.
option 1 : Use LHAPDF5 PDFs.
option 2 : Use LHAPDF6 PDFs.
option 3 : Use LHAPDF6 PDF grids with the internal PYTHIA interpolation rather than the LHAPDF6 library.

mode  Tune:pp   (default = 14; minimum = -1; maximum = 34)
Choice of tune to pp/ppbar data, mainly for the initial-state-radiation, multiparton-interactions and beam-remnants aspects of PYTHIA. Note that all early tunes, including those done by the LHC collaborations based on tune 4C, use the e^+e^- tune tunes/Hoeth2009.cmnd (Tune:ee = 3), while the Monash 2013 tune and the further tunes based on it use Monash2013-ee.cmnd (Tune:ee = 7). All the tune configurations provided also load their corresponding e^+e^-. If this is not the wanted behaviour, then these e^+e^- settings must be changed after setting the pp/ppbar tune. In the following options the settings file used to load the tune is provided after the tune number. Every tune here can then be equivalently loaded with the command include = tunes/settings.cmnd where settings.cmnd is the corresponding settings file. In the future the Tune:pp setting will be removed in favor of the include syntax.
option -1 : (tunes/Reset-pp.cmnd) reset all values that are affected by any of the pp/ppbar tunes to the default values.
option 0 : no values are overwritten during the initial setup, step 2 above. Note that changing to 0 in the user code has no effect; if you want to restore the individual settings you should instead use -1.
option 1 : (tunes/OldIsrMpi.cmnd) default used up to version 8.126, based on some early and primitive comparisons with data.
option 2 : (tunes/Skands2009.cmnd) "Tune 1", default in 8.127 - 8.139, based on some data comparisons by Peter Skands. Largely but not wholly overlaps with the default option 0.
option 3 : (tunes/Tune2C.cmnd) "Tune 2C", introduced with 8.140 [Cor10a]. It uses the CTEQ 6L1 PDF, and is intended to give good agreement with much of the published CDF data.
option 4 : (tunes/Tune2M.cmnd) "Tune 2M", introduced with 8.140 [Cor10a]. It is uses the MRST LO** PDF, which has a momentum sum somewhat above unity, which is compensated by a smaller alpha_s than in the previous tune. Again it is intended to give good agreement with much of the published CDF data.
option 5 : (tunes/Tune4C.cmnd) "Tune 4C", newer tune, introduced with 8.145 [Cor10a]. Starts out from tune 2C, but with a reduced cross section for diffraction, plus modified multiparton interactions parameters to give a higher and more rapidly increasing charged pseudorapidity plateau, for better agreement with some early key LHC numbers. See also the comparative study in [Buc11]. The starting point for many later tunes.
option 6 : (tunes/Tune4Cx.cmnd) "Tune 4Cx", based on tune 4C, but using the x-dependent matter profile, MultipartonInteractions:bProfile = 4 and an increased MultipartonInteractions:pT0Ref [Cor11].
option 7 : (tunes/ATLAS-MB-A2-CTEQ6L1.cmnd) "ATLAS MB Tune A2-CTEQ6L1", a minimum-bias tune based on tune 4Cx, but without rapidity-ordered spacelike emissions [ATL12]. Uses CTEQ 6L1, by default from LHAPDF.
option 8 : (tunes/ATLAS-MB-A2-MSTW2008LO.cmnd) "ATLAS MB Tune A2-MSTW2008LO", as above, but uses MSTW 2008 LO, by default from LHAPDF.
option 9 : (tunes/ATLAS-UE-AU2-CTEQ6L1.cmnd) "ATLAS UE Tune AU2-CTEQ6L1", an underlying-event tune based on tune 4Cx, but without rapidity-ordered spacelike emissions [ATL12]. Uses CTEQ 6L1, by default from LHAPDF.
option 10 : (tunes/ATLAS-UE-AU2-MSTW2008LO.cmnd) "ATLAS UE Tune AU2-MSTW2008LO", as above, but uses MSTW 2008 LO, by default from LHAPDF.
option 11 : (tunes/ATLAS-UE-AU2-CT10.cmnd) "ATLAS UE Tune AU2-CT10", as above, but uses CT 10, which is not currently implemented in PYTHIA, so you must link LHAPDF.
option 12 : (tunes/ATLAS-UE-AU2-MRST2007LOx.cmnd) "ATLAS UE Tune AU2-MRST2007LO*", as above, but uses MRST 2007 LO*, by default from LHAPDF.
option 13 : (tunes/ATLAS-UE-AU2-MRST2007LOxx.cmnd) "ATLAS UE Tune AU2-MRST2007LO**", as above, but uses MRST 2007 LO**, by default from LHAPDF.
option 14 : (tunes/Monash2013.cmnd) the Monash 2013 tune by Peter Skands at al. [Ska14], to both e^+e^- and pp/pbarp data. The starting point for many later tunes.
option 15 : (tunes/CMS-CUETP8S1-CTEQ6L1.cmnd) "CMS UE Tune CUETP8S1-CTEQ6L1", an underlying-event tune based on tune 4C [CMS14]. Uses CTEQ 6L1, by default from LHAPDF.
option 16 : (tunes/CMS-CUETP8S1-HERAPDF1.cmnd) "CMS UE Tune CUETP8S1-HERAPDF1.5LO", an underlying-event tune based on tune 4C [CMS14]. Uses HERAPDF1.5LO, which is not currently implemented in PYTHIA, so you must link LHAPDF.
option 17 : (tunes/ATLAS-AZ.cmnd) "ATLAS Tune AZ", is tuned to the pT spectrum of the Z^/gamma^*0 boson in a set of rapidity bins [ATL14].
option 18 : (tunes/CMS-CUETP8M1-NNPDF23LO.cmnd) "CMS Tune MonashStar", alias CUETP8M1-NNPDF2.3LO, an underlying-event tune based on the Monash 2013 tune.
option 19 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-CTEQL1.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 central tune with CTEQL1", a full-scale tune to most ATLAS jet and underlying-event observables [ATL14a], starting out from the Monash 2013 tune. The following tunes 20 - 32 belong to the same group.
option 20 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-MSTW2008LO.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 central tune with MSTW2008LO", see above tune 19.
option 21 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-NNPDF32LO.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 central tune with NNPDF2.3LO", see above tune 19. Defines the center of the 23 - 32 variations, so would be a good choice if you only want to study one tune from the A14 family.
option 22 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-HERAPDF15LO.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 central tune with HERAPDF1.5LO", see above tune 19. Uses HERAPDF1.5LO, which is not currently implemented in PYTHIA, so you must link LHAPDF.
option 23 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v+1.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 1+" of tune 21.
option 24 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v-1.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 1-" of tune 21.
option 25 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v+2.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 2+" of tune 21.
option 26 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v-2.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 2-" of tune 21.
option 27 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v+3a.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3a+" of tune 21.
option 28 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v-3a.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3a-" of tune 21.
option 29 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v+3b.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3b+" of tune 21.
option 30 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v-3b.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3b-" of tune 21.
option 31 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v+3c.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3c+" of tune 21.
option 32 : (tunes/ATLAS-A14-v-3c.cmnd) "ATLAS A14 variation 3c-" of tune 21.