Running A Systematics Algorithm With Common CP Algorithms

Last update: 16 Aug 2024 [History] [Edit]

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So now we have a basic algorithm that will pick up the corrected objects from the event store. The next step is to extend it to handle systematic variations. In principle this could be done manually, but we have a number of helper classes we provide which make it easier and robust to handle this.

Add systematics handles

First off lets add the dependency on the helper package SystematicsHandles to our package. Add SystematicsHandlesLib to CMakeLists.txt.

Then add these includes to your header file:

#include <SystematicsHandles/SysReadHandle.h>
#include <SystematicsHandles/SysListHandle.h>

The core for systematics handling is the systematics handles. For our purposes we use a CP::SysReadHandle which handles reading objects and CP::SysListHandle which handles the list of systematics itself. There are also CP::SysCopyHandle and CP::SysWriteHandle for advanced users (not shown in the tutorial).

Now add the systematics handles to the class in the header file:

  /// \brief the systematics list we run
private:
  CP::SysListHandle m_systematicsList {this};

  /// \brief the muon collection we run on
private:
  CP::SysReadHandle<xAOD::MuonContainer> m_muonHandle {
    this, "muons", "AnaMuons_%SYS%", "the muon collection to run on"};

This uses the C++ inline initialization, meaning we don’t have to add anything to the constructor itself.

However, we will need to do some work inside initialize() to initialize the handles. So add that there:

  ANA_CHECK (m_systematicsList.addHandle (m_muonHandle));
  ANA_CHECK (m_systematicsList.initialize());

You also need to move

#include <xAODMuon/MuonContainer.h>

from MyxAODAnalysis.cxx to MyxAODAnalysis.h.

If you want to, you can run it at this point and it should work as before, but it won’t be doing anything for you yet, as we are not using the systematics handles yet.

Add a systematics loop

The basic systematic loop can be added as:

execute ()
{
  ...
  for (const auto& sys : m_systematicsList.systematicsVector()) {

    ...

  }
  return StatusCode::SUCCESS;

}

tip Make sure you only wrap this around the code you just added that will be using systematic variations. If you include all of the previous code within this loop, you will end up with a lot of steps being repeated multiple times for each event.

This uses a C++11 range based loop, but apart from that it is a fairly simple and standard construct. Note that this purposely uses const auto& for the type, as future updates may change the actual type used here. This will then pick up the list of systematics configured/provided by the CommonServiceSequence. You could also specify the list of systematics manually, but this makes it much easier to make it consistent over all algorithms, plus it is able to filter out systematics that do not affect your algorithm (e.g. ignore jet systematics if this algorithm only deals with muons).

warning From this point forward, you will need to finish all of the changes in this section before you can recompile. The changes are all interconnected and break the code that we implemented in the last section.

Next change the muon retrieval from

    ANA_CHECK (evtStore()->retrieve (systMuons, "AnaMuons_NOSYS"));

to

    ANA_CHECK (m_muonHandle.retrieve (systMuons, sys));

This will retrieve the appropriate muon container for the given systematic. The name will be based on the name specified for the CP::SysReadHandle above (AnaMuons_%SYS%), modified for the name of the systematic. Again, you could do that manually, but the systematics handles hide a lot of the complexity involved in figuring out which systematic affects which object, and make the code a lot more compact.

Make systematics varied histograms

We are almost there, the only thing that is missing is to provide systematics varied histograms. We don’t have a utility for that (yet), so it will get a bit messy.

Start out by changing the histogram declaration in the header to a map:

  std::unordered_map<CP::SystematicSet,TH1*> m_sumPtHist;

Then in the source file change the part where we create the histogram to:

    auto sumPtHist = m_sumPtHist.find (sys);
    if (sumPtHist == m_sumPtHist.end())
    {
      std::string name;
      ANA_CHECK(m_systematicsList.service().makeSystematicsName(name, "sumPtHist_%SYS%",sys));
      ANA_CHECK (book (TH1F (name.c_str(), "sum pt", 20, 0, 200)));
      m_sumPtHist[sys] = hist (name);
      sumPtHist = m_sumPtHist.find (sys);
    }

and then the line where we fill it to:

    sumPtHist->second->Fill (sumPt/1000.);

Commit your code changes

When you are sure that your code changes are working correctly, commit and push them.