LHEReader

DOI Website arXiv

A python script to read Les Houches Event (LHE) files and use PyROOT to convert it into a ROOT Tree

The structure of the LHE file is:

Event Level Info: Number of Particles, Status, event weight, scales, alpha_QED, alpha_QCD

Particle Level Info: PDG id, status, mother1, mother2, color1, color2, px, py, pz, energy, mass, lifetime, spin

Installation

git clone https://github.com/amanmdesai/LHEReader.git

Usage

python LHEReader.py --input input.lhe --output output.root


usage: LHEReader [-h] [--input INPUT] [--output OUTPUT]

Converts LHE files to ROOT Trees

options:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  --input INPUT    Input file path and Name (can be .lhe or .lhe.gz)
  --output OUTPUT  Output file path and Name (.root file)

where input and output refer to the path of the input and output files respectively

Citation

@article{Desai:2026lst, author = “Desai, Aman”, title = “{LHEReader: Simplified Conversion from Les Houches Event Files to ROOT Format}”, eprint = “2603.01489”, archivePrefix = “arXiv”, primaryClass = “hep-ph”, month = “3”, year = “2026” }

References:

  1. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0609017