TDatabasePDG and TParticleDB may be a better alternative to the particle codes used in the StarClassLibrary.  Examining the code, I have a few notes about it.  Will make some remarks at the end about how STAR can benefit from this class.

 

TDatabasePDG reads in particle properties and the particle data group ID associated with each particle.  These properties include mass, charge, lifetime, etc...  They also contain the decay modes for each particle.  The  code reads the data from a text file located at $ROOTSTS/etc/pdg_table.txt.

The advantage over the StarClassLibrary is

 

(1) The code is an interface to a plain text file rather than N~100 different classes,

(2) The full list of PDG particles is in the text file, rather than the subset which appears in StarClassLibrary,

(3) The interface to the database (TDatabasePDG) is maintained by the ROOT team,

...

 

A few limitations of the class:

 

+ The geant3 (G3) particle IDs are mapped to the PDG ids in a hardcoded lookup table

+ Ditto for the isajet/pythia ids.

+ No facility provided for defining a user mapping

+ It is not clear whether the text file is updated with ROOT releases, or with ROOT releases following