Three-dimensional event visualization for the ATLAS calorimeter

Abstract

The ATLAS detector was commissioned with cosmic rays. For such commissioning, a number of software tools has been developed to support data analysis. Among ATLAS sub-detectors, commissioning the calorimeter system demanded a considerable effort due to its segmentation into seven detection layers, which produce more than a hundred thousand readout channels. Tasks like performance evaluation of the calorimeter, calibration and handling noisy or dead channels benefit a lot from cosmic muon track visualization, which facilitates the identification of the activated cells in the calorimeter. The coherence of the reconstructed data can be visually checked and potential problems can be detected in a easier way. This work presents a 3D visualization tool for the ATLAS calorimeter system, the CaloGeoView. The tool was built using ROOT Framework, which provides a smooth integration with analyses currently performed by the ATLAS community. The CaloGeoView structure and some applications with reconstructed data are presented. Due to its 3D graphical interface, the CaloGeoView has been providing a simple and intuitive way to analyze results of event reconstruction.