#######################################################################
# WHIZARD
# 
# Copyright (C) 1999-2017 by 
#     Wolfgang Kilian <kilian@physik.uni-siegen.de>
#     Thorsten Ohl <ohl@physik.uni-wuerzburg.de>
#     Juergen Reuter <juergen.reuter@desy.de>
#     with contributions from Fabian Bach, Felix Braam, Bijan Chokoufe Nejad,
#     Sebastian Schmidt, Marco Sekulla, Christian Speckner, So Young Shim,
#     Christian Weiss, Zhijie Zhao, Daniel Wiesler
#
# WHIZARD is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
# any later version.
#
# WHIZARD is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the 
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
#
########################################################################

WHIZARD is a program system designed for the efficient calculation of
multi-particle scattering cross sections and simulated event samples.

The events can be written to file in HepMC, LHEF, LCIO or ASCII format.
Tree-level matrix elements are generated automatically for arbitrary
partonic processes by calling the O'Mega matrix element generator.
Matrix elements obtained by alternative methods (e.g., including loop
corrections) may be interfaced as well via the BLHA interface, from 
external packages like e.g. GoSam and OpenLoops.

The program is able to calculate numerically stable signal and
background cross sections and generate unweighted event samples with
reasonable efficiency for processes with up to six or eight final-state
particles.  Polarization is treated exactly for both the initial and
final states.  Final-state quark or lepton flavors can be summed over
automatically where needed.  

For Linear Collider physics, beamstrahlung (CIRCE) and ISR spectra are
included for electrons and photons.  Currently, WHIZARD supports the
Standard Model, optionally with anomalous couplings (for gauge bosons, 
the Higgs boson, and the top quark), the MSSM, the NMSSM, several types 
of Little Higgs models, Universal Extra Dimensions, the 3-site Higgsless
moose model, and a generic Z' model. Model extensions or completely 
different models can be added. Almost arbitrary models might be added via
interfaces to the packages FeynRules and SARAH.

The WHIZARD manual as well as the documented source code can be found 
in the subdirectory 'share/doc'.  The manual describes the installation 
and usage of WHIZARD.