An Object-Oriented Minimization Package for HEP

Abstract

A portion of the HEP community has perceived the need for a minimization package written in C++ and taking advantage of the Object-Oriented nature of that langauge. To be acceptable for HEP, such a package must at least encompass all the capabilities of Minuit. Aside from the slight plus of not relying on outside Fortran compilation, the advantages that a C++ package based on O-O design would confer over the multitude of available C++ Minuit-wrappers include: Easier extensibility to different algorithms and forms opf constraints; and usage modes which would not be available in the global-common-based Minuit design. An example of the latter is a job persuing two ongoing minimization problems simultaneously. We discuss the design and implementation of such a package, which extends Minuit only in minor ways but which greatly diminishes the programming effort (if not the algorithm thought) needed to make more significant extensions.