Geant4: physics potential for HEP instrumentation

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Abstract

The status of Geant4 toolkit for simulation of particle transport and interaction with matter is presented. The set of available models for simulation of electromagnetic, hadronic, and optical processes are discussed.

Introduction

Geant4 is a new object-oriented (OO) toolkit for the Monte Carlo simulation of the passage of particles through matter [1]. Its application areas include high energy physics and nuclear experiments, medical, accelerator and space physics studies. The origin of Geant4 development come from two studies done independently at CERN and KEK in 1993 [2]. Both groups sought to investigate how modern computing techniques could be applied to improve what was offered by the existing Geant3 program [3]. These two activities merged and a proposal was accepted by CERN as RD44 project. It was completed in the end of 1998 [4] with the delivery of the first production release. Subsequently, the Geant4 Collaboration was established to continue the development of the toolkit, and to provide maintenance and user support.

Section snippets

Geant4 design and tools

The design choice of RD44 was OO methodology and C++ language. Other design requirements are that it is modular and flexible, and that its implementation of physics is transparent and open to user validation. It should allow the user to understand, customise extend it in all domains. All aspects of the simulation process have been included in the toolkit:

  • geometry;

  • materials;

  • particles;

  • events;

  • tracking of particles through materials and electromagnetic fields;

  • particle interactions;

  • response of

Geant4 physics processes

In Geant4 interaction of particles with matter is designed in term of physics process [1]. All physics processes are treated in the same manner from the tracking point of view. The Geant4 approach enables anyone to create a process and assign it to a particle. The following major categories of processes are provided:

  • electromagnetic;

  • hadronic;

  • decay;

  • photolepton-hadron;

  • optical;

  • parametrisation;

  • transportation.

Particle transport in Geant4 is simulated as a number of steps. A process can be invocated

Status of Geant4 HEP applications

Currently Geant4 is widely used—about 400 downloads per month are registered. The leading rule is playing the BaBar Collaboration, which started Geant4 Monte Carlo production in 2001 and about 108 B-meson events were simulated [29]. It was shown that BaBar detector and material model of Geant4 is more adequate than that of Geant3, and the performance is nearly the same.

The LHC detectors are more complicated and will work at higher energies. The ATLAS collaboration is working on geometry

Prospects for the future and conclusions

Being used for physics production the toolkit are simultaneously under intensive development, which include adding of new physics models and interfaces, optimisation existing code and design. Following improvements are important for HEP instrumentation:

  • new electromagnetic processes for TeV energy region;

  • update low energy electromagnetic models (Auger effect, Doppler effect);

  • continue development of models of hadron nuclear interaction;

  • providing a cut per region regime.

First priority for Geant4

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