Extension of the mcplots Project and Rivet to Cover Specific Needs Arising from Heavy-Ion Analyses

The comparison between experimental data and Monte Carlo event generator output is a important tool in high energy and heavy-ion physics. It is crucial for the search of new physics, the test of theory and models, the determination of detector effects and the development of event generators. The MC analysis tool Rivet is especially made to cover this comparison procedure. Both, analysis scripts corresponding to a experimental analysis as well as the histogram data is provided. The analysis scripts can be applied to MC output producing histogram data which can be compared to experimental data immediately. mcplots steers the Rivet analysis and MC run, automizes the plotting and provides a web page where produced plots can be accessed. However, some analyses in heavy-ion physics are either very cumbersome to implement or cannot be covered by the current Rivet and mcplots workflow at all. This report summarizes first prototypes of extensions implemented to cover such analyses as part of the summer student project. The frameworks were extended within a test environment such that both specific analyses like measurements of nuclear modification factors can be covered as well as further procedures like complex merging of histogram data can be done. The work presented in the following also establishes the basis for further developments by making the mcplots and Rivet framework more flexible to cover more complex analyses in general.