[Rivet] lifetimes in rivet

[James Monk]

On 7 Apr 2010, at 09:45, Jonathan Butterworth wrote:

> I suspect that one could build a variant of the final state projection 
> which studied the decay history, and if certain particles which should 
> have been "stable" has been decayed by the generator, removed their 
> decay products and added back the original. However, there's no way 
> rivet could do the opposite (i.e. decay a particle which should have 
> been decayed but which the generator left stable). At best it could flag 
> up an error "particle should have been decayed according to the lifetime 
> criteria of this analysis, but wasn't"

That sounds to me like it might impinge upon generator independence a bit (I can imagine Tauola-hell in navigating back up the event history, for example).  What would be the advantage, other than saving the end user from having to know the details of what their generator is doing, and do we really want to encourage that?

cheers,

James