NNSA Center 2012

They will support "development of advanced simulations and measurement techniques leading to improved radiation and particle detection methods in terms of energy, temporal and spatial resolution".

GEANT and MCNPX are two simulation packages commonly used by researchers in Nuclear physics to develop experiments and interpret experimental resuls. While GEANT4 is a publicly available open source package, MCNPX requires a license and may only be available in binary form to those who are not elibigle for a source license. GEANT and MCNPX have substantial overlap in the models and data they employ to predict how particles interact with matter. For example, both utilize the Evaluated Nuclear Data FIle (ENDF) from the National Nuclear Data Center as input to their simulation programs. Historically, MCNPX has been a more complete resource for simulation Nuclear reactions than GEANT. Recently however, GEANT4 has been gaining ground and becoming a testbed for such models as the Bertini Cascade model (INCL/ABLA). Although each has their stengths and weaknesses, nuclear physics students who desire to develop nuclear models to use in a simulation program, but are not eligible for the MCNPX source code, can use GEANT4.

Students working at the Idaho Accelerator Center have a long history of using MCNPX to interpret their experiental results. Some recent effort has been made design experiments by simulating the performance of the apparatus.

I need half a page about how GEANT4 can be used for educational purposes and how it will help to increase the number of nuclear physicists in the US. This is for NNSA Center of Excellence proposal.We are not doing anything innovative, but we can say we at least will use it to train students. I am going to add another half page about MCNPX. If you know the main difference between them - please share :)

The Figure below compares GEANT4's U-238(n,f) model with the IAEA's international evaluation

INTERNATIONAL EVALUATION OF NEUTRON CROSS-SECTION STANDARDS, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY,VIENNA, 2007 File:U238-xsection.pdf

absolute f_xsection in the table 7.1 p.91

Data set # 646 pr 648

646: Li Jingwen et al,INDC(CPR)-009 (1986) 7

648:R.K. Smith et al. (1956),Personal communication, G. Hanson (1975)

Table : energy range of interactions for photon neutron and proton.