ROOT is an object-oriented program and library developed by CERN, aimed at solving the data analysis challenges of high-energy physics.
It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining.
ROOT is currently mainly used in data analysis and data acquisition in high energy physics experiments — most current experimental plots and results are obtained using ROOT.
Features include:
- Provides packages for:
- Histogramming and graphing to visualize and analyze distributions and functions.
- Graphical capabilities of ROOT range from 2D objects (lines, polygons, arrows) to various plots, histograms, and 3D graphical objects
- Curve fitting (regression analysis) and minimization of functionals.
- Statistics tools used for data analysis.
- Matrix algebra.
- Four-vector computations, as used in high energy physics.
- Standard mathematical functions.
- Multivariate data analysis, e.g. using neural networks.
- Image manipulation, used e.g. to analyze astronomical pictures.
- Access to distributed data (in the context of the Grid).
- Distributed computing, to parallelize data analyses.
- Persistence and serialization of objects, which can cope with changes in class definitions of persistent data.
- Access to databases.
- 3D visualizations (geometry).
- Creating files in various graphics formats, like PostScript, JPEG, SVG.
- Interfacing Python and Ruby code in both directions.
- Interfacing Monte Carlo event generators.
- C++ interpreter called cling built in. It’s used for the prompt, both C++ and Python. It also serves as a source of information to store C++ objects, and provides the back-end for ROOT’s signal/slot and plug-in mechanisms.
Website: root.cern.ch
Support: Documentation, Forums
Developer: ROOT team
License: GNU Lesser General Public License
The software is mainly written in C++ but integrated with other languages such as Python and R. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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