1 Introduction
This manual should introduce to the DDG4 framework. One goal of DDG4 is to easily configure the simulation applications capable of simulating the physics response of detector configurations as they are used for example in high energy physics experiments. In such simulation programs the user normally has to define the experimental setup in terms of its geometry and in terms of its active elements which sample the detector response.
The goal of DDG4 is to generalize the configuration of a simulation application to a degree, which does not force users to write code to test a detector design. At the same time it should of course be feasible to supply specialized user written modules which are supposed to seamlessly operate together with standard modules supplied by the toolkit. Detector-simulation depends strongly on the use of an underlying simulation toolkit, the most prominent candidate nowadays being Geant4 [8]. supports simulation activities with Geant4 providing an automatic translation mechanism between geometry representations. The simulation response in the active elements of the detector is strongly influenced by the technical choices and precise simulations depends on the very specific detection techniques.
Similar to the aim of [1], where with time a standard palette of detector components developed by users should become part of the toolkit, DDG4 also hopes to provide a standard palette of components used to support simulation activities for detector layouts where detector designers may base the simulation of a planned experiment on these predefined components for initial design and optimization studies. The longterm vision is to construct simulation applications writing only new components not yet present i.e. the main work will be to select the appropriate components from the palette and connect them to a functional program.
This is not a manual to Geant4 nor the basic infrastructure of . It is assumed that this knowledge is present and the typical glossary is known.