[LHAPDF-announce] LHAPDF 6.1.6 release + PDF set updates

[Andy Buckley]

Dear LHAPDF users,

We're pleased to announce the release of LHAPDF 6.1.6, almost exactly a 
year after version 6.1.5.

The model of separated library and data releases has worked well, with 
many new PDFs released through LHAPDF this year without any need for a 
code update... but the time has come to provide an update for various 
minor issues.

This new release fixes some issues with newer compilers and Boost 
releases than were active a year ago, fixes and extends the uncertainty 
calculation routines, adds/fixes some issues in the Fortran legacy 
interface, allows more complete control of the search path via the 
LHAPDF_DATA_PATH environment variable, and provides easier access to 
quark mass and flavour threshold metadata. In addition, the Python 
interface should now be usable with Python version 3.x.

This new version is available from the web page at 
http://lhapdf.hepforge.org/ and is recommended for immediate use.


At the same time we would like to announce several updates to the 
official collection of PDF set data:

* New versions of the 30-eigenvector PDF4LHC15 sets are now available, 
with the low-Q limit extended down to 1.4 GeV.
* A fix has been applied to the alpha_s(MZ) value in the 
HERAPDF20_NNLO_ALPHAS118 set.
* And we have migrated the two GRVPI pion PDF fits from LHAPDF5 to the 
v6 format, fixing an issue with the alpha_s evaluation in the LO set 
during the conversion.

As usual, all these PDFs are available from the LHAPDF website, and AFS 
& CVMFS repositories: there are now a startling 542 PDFs in the 
collection. And we shortly expect two further new sets of PDFs: Nf=4 
versions of the PDF4LHC15 meta-fit, and nCTEQ15 nuclear PDFs... we'll be 
in touch about that in the new year.


Best wishes, and Merry Christmas!

The LHAPDF6 team

-- 
Dr Andy Buckley, Lecturer / Royal Society University Research Fellow
Particle Physics Expt Group, University of Glasgow