RAVE—a Detector-independent vertex reconstruction toolkit

Abstract A detector-independent toolkit for vertex reconstruction (RAVE 1 ) is being developed, along with a standalone framework ( VERTIGO2 ) for testing, analyzing and debugging. The core algorithms represent state of the art for geometric vertex finding and fitting by both linear (Kalman filter) and robust estimation methods. Main design goals are ease of use, flexibility for embedding into existing software frameworks, extensibility, and openness. The implementation is based on modern object-oriented techniques, is coded in C ++ with interfaces for Java and Python, and follows an open-source approach. A beta release is available.