checkmate is hosted by Hepforge, IPPP Durham


IMPORTANT: CheckMATE only works with Pythia 8.2!



CheckMATE (Check Models At Terascale Energies) is a program package which accepts simulated event files in many formats for any given model. The program then determines whether the model is excluded or not at 95% C.L. by comparing to many recent experimental analyses. Furthermore the program can calculate confidence limits and provide detailed information about signal regions of interest. It is simple to use and the program structure allows for easy extensions to upcoming LHC results in the future.

Current Members: Manimala Chakraborti, Nishita Desai, Florian Domingo, Jong Soo Kim, Krzysztof Rolbiecki, Roberto Ruiz de Austri, Ipsita Saha, Liangliang Shang, Mangesh Sonawane, Zeren Simon Wang, Yuanfang Yue

Former Members: Daniel Dercks, Manuel Drees, Herbert Dreiner, Frederic Ponzca, Jamie Tattersall, Thorsten Weber

Last Updated: 12/03/2021

Code References
CheckMATE is built upon the tools and hard work of many people. If CheckMATE is used in your publication it is important that all of the following citations are included,

Delphes 3: JHEP 1402 (2014) 057
FastJet: Eur.Phys.J. C72 (2012) 1896
                Phys.Lett. B641 (2006) 57-61
Anti-kt jet algorithm: JHEP 0804 (2008) 063
CLs prescription: J.Phys. G28 (2002) 2693-2704

For analyses that use the MT2 family of kinematical discriminants,
Oxbridge Kinetics Library: www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/~lester/mt2/
                                              Phys.Lett. B463 (1999) 99-103
                                               J.Phys. G29 (2003) 2343-2363
Cheng and Han algorithm: JHEP 0812 (2008) 063
MT2bl: JHEP 1207 (2012) 110

For analyses that use the MCT family of kinematical discriminants,
MctLib: mctlib.hepforge.org
MCT: JHEP 0804 (2008) 034
MCT corrected: JHEP 1003 (2010) 030
MCT parallel and perpendicular: Phys.Rev.Lett. 107 (2011) 061801

For analyses that use topness,
Topness: https://github.com/michaelgraesser/topness
Phys.Rev.Lett. 111 (2013) no.12, 121802

Analysis References

Whenever CheckMATE is used all experimental analyses that were used to set limits in the study should be referenced.

In addition analyses are now being submitted to CheckMATE from all over the world (special thanks to Junjie Cao, Liangliang Shang, Jin Min Yang and Yang Zhang for being the first). We now ask that users reference the original study that these submitted analyses were published in. Details of the relevant analyses are given in both the validated and unvalidated analyses lists linked on the left.

Virtual Machine available!
Sometimes it can happen that we are not able to help you installing CheckMATE on your system (see for example the note 'Mac Users' below). In the unfortunate case that this happens but you really want to use CheckMATE, consider downloading the virtual machine from here and run CheckMATE within it. You will obviously have to pay a speed penalty due to the virtual machine but according to our tests the run time does not even increase by more than a factor of 1.5 (and it might be less the more memory access you give to the virtual machine).
Note that you can even use the event files you have produced on your Mac without much effort by just setting up a shared folder within VirtualBox to allow the machine to access the folder(s) with the event file(s) in it.

Check our new online tutorial!
In the sidebar you can find a link to our new online tutorial. After downloading a virtual machine which has everything already set up for you, there are three main exercises which will tell you step by step Interested? Click on 'CheckMATE Tutorial' and have fun!

Important Note: Mac Users
We are aware of several possible complications that can occur during the installation of Root and/or CheckMATE on a Mac computer. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find an all-working solution. We still encourage all Mac owners to try to follow the instructions in the 'Getting Started' section and to contact and inform us about any issues that you encountered.