Contur (Constraining New Theories Using Rivet) is a software toolkit for setting constraints on new models in particle physics, using the bank of existing measurements recorded in HEPData and documented in Rivet. The basic premise of the method is that any modifications to the Standard Model Lagrangian typically introduce modifications to already well-understood and measured spectra. As such, if adding a BSM component to the Lagrangian, such as a new particle or interaction, would change a measured distribution beyond its experimental uncertainties, then, in simple terms "we’d already have seen it". Contur provides a way of working out how the resulting BSM events would have shown up in the hundreds of existing measurements from the LHC, and thus of excluding parts of the BSM parameter space without the need for a dedicated search.

{"references": ["ButterwoJonathan M. Butterworth, David Grellscheid, Michael Kr\u00e4mer, Bj\u00e4rn Sarrazin, and David Yallup. Constraining new physics with collider measurements of Standard Model signatures. JHEP, 03:078, 2017. arXiv:1606.05296, doi:10.1007/JHEP03(2017)078.rth, Jonathan"]}