GLISSANDO: GLauber Initial-State Simulation AND mOre… Original Research Article

We present a Monte Carlo generator for a variety of Glauber-like models (the wounded-nucleon model, binary collisions model, mixed model, model with hot spots). These models describe the early stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, in particular the spatial distribution of the transverse energy deposition which ultimately leads to production of particles from the interaction region. The original geometric distribution of sources in the transverse plane can be superimposed with a statistical distribution simulating the dispersion in the generated transverse energy in each individual collision. The program generates inter alia the fixed-axes (standard) and variable-axes (participant) two-dimensional profiles of the density of sources in the transverse plane and their azimuthal Fourier components. These profiles can be used in further analysis of physical phenomena, such as the jet quenching, event-by-event hydrodynamics, or analysis of the elliptic flow and its fluctuations. Characteristics of the event (multiplicities, eccentricities, Fourier coefficients, etc.) are stored in a ROOT file and can be analyzed off-line. In particular, event-by-event studies can be carried out in a simple way. A number of ROOT scripts is provided for that purpose. Supplied variants of the code can also be used for the proton–nucleus and deuteron–nucleus collisions.