VNI-4.1: Simulation of space-time evolution of e^+e^- .... A+B collisions with parton-cascades, parton-hadron conversion, final-state hadron cascades

VNI is a general-purpose Monte-Carlo event-generator, which includes the simulation of lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron, lepton-nucleus, hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions. It uses the real-time evolution of parton cascades in conjunction with a self-consistent hadronization scheme, as well as the development of hadron cascades after hadronization. The causal evolution from a specific initial state (determined by the colliding beam particles) is followed by the time-development of the phase-space densities of partons, pre-hadronic parton clusters, and final-state hadrons, in position-space, momentum-space and color-space. The parton-evolution is described in terms of a space-time generalization of the familiar momentum-space description of multiple (semi)hard interactions in QCD, involving 2 -> 2 parton collisions, 2 -> 1 parton fusion processes, and 1 -> 2 radiation processes. The formation of color-singlet pre-hadronic clusters and their decays into hadrons, on the other hand, is treated by using a spatial criterion motivated by confinement and a non-perturbative model for hadronization. Finally, the cascading of produced pre-hadronic clusters and of hadrons is includes a multitude of 2 -> n processes, and is modeled in paralell to the parton cascade description. This paper gives a brief review of the physics underlying VNI, as well as a detailed description of the program itself. The latter program description emphasizes easy-to-use pragmatism and explains how to use the program (including simple examples), annotates input and control parameters, and discusses output data provided by it.