CORSIKA interface

CORSIKA interface using COAST to extract shower information within python.

This piece of code is an implementation of the COAST interface in order to link CORSIKA air-shower information handling to a python interpreter. It will enable you to write, extract, modify, etc. air-shower data on the fly within the scope of python scripts. It is a 1-to-1 map of the functionality of the COAST interface mode.

Prerequisites

CORSIKA
COAST
python3 development files (e.g. python3-dev or python3-devel packages for your distribution)
(g)make
gcc
doxygen

Installation

First clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/image357/corsika-interface

Next, point your COAST_USER_LIB environment variable to the git repository. For instance, add the following to your .bashrc:

COAST_USER_LIB="/path/to/corsika-interface"; export COAST_USER_LIB
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:}$COAST_USER_LIB"; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Make sure that you have the following environment variables:

CORSIKA_DIR
COAST_DIR

E.g. in your .bashrc file:

CORSIKA_DIR="/path/to/corsika/install/corsika-76900"; export CORSIKA_DIR
COAST_DIR="/path/to/coast/install/coast-v4r5"; export COAST_DIR
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:}$COAST_DIR/lib"; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Once your environment is ready, compile the project within your git repository:

make release docs

Go to your CORSIKA installation folder and run the ./coconut script. Choose whatever options you want but make sure that you at least select

d3 - Use an external COAST user library (COrsika data AccesS Tool)

Once the compilation of CORSIKA is done you are ready to create your python analysis code. First, create a new folder (for instance /path/to/python/code). Then copy the file named override_example.py from your git repository to this new folder such that it is called override.py:

cp /path/to/corsika-interface/override_example.py /path/to/python/code/override.py

At last, you have to define another environment variable, because CORSIKA needs to know where you have your python code. Add the following to your .bashrc:

CORSIKA_PYTHON_INTERFACE="/path/to/python/code"; export CORSIKA_PYTHON_INTERFACE

That's it! When you now run your CORSIKA binary you should see the following two additional outputs:

patched interface
running interface tests

Usage

You control the python interface with your override.py file. It is the main entrance file that will be executed by the CORSIKA binary. In order to use the link to the COAST interface you have to inherit from a specific class:

interface.Override

This class is an abstract interface class for which you will have to implement 5 methods:

init: Used to do some initialization tasks
close: Used to do some some finalization tasks
write: Will give you CORSIKA block-data whenever it is ready to be written to disk.
interaction: Will be called when there is interaction information available.
track: Will give you information about particle tracks.

Once you have implemented your personal interface class, you have to call

interface.patch(MyInterfaceClass)

in order to override the default interface behavior.

Every user-accessible method is documented and you should be able to explore the functionality via autocompletion features of your editor or you can have a look at the official documentation in the html folder in your git repository.

Contributing

Feel free to fork the project, create pull requests and open issues if you encouter problems or if you have questions.

Disclaimer

The source code can be found here: https://github.com/image357/CORSIKA-7-Python-Interface