Offline Basics

The readout section described how energy deposited in the PES gets transformed into data stored in PESD banks. But the average user isn't interested in the raw data itself. The stuff we care about are particle energies and positions along with quality information. And in order to get these high level objects, you have to run the PES offline software. So how does the offline code work? Overall, the process is pretty complicated, but the basic idea isn't. We start by converting the raw ADC counts from the PESD banks into an energy. This transforms strips into what we call "PlugStrips". It's now necessary to group these PlugStrips to form a 1D cluster. Clustering involves finding a seed strip which has an energy above a threshold and taking the neighboring strips. Then we look for matching 1D clusters on the u and v layers. The end result is a 2D cluster which has an energy and position. For information on how to access the 2D clusters, go to the Not so basic section and look under Deliverables. There you will find the proper code.