Items in this list are related to developments scheduled for the current year.
Fixes, studies and maintenance items, as well as normal testing, Q/A tasks are not mentioned here, as part of routine activity
NOTE: Items marked with (*) may or may not be achieved in 2021.
Configuration & Software Management
- Enabling of C++17 as minimum ISO C++ Standard - (1)
- Review mandatory and optional compiler flags needed to build and link to Geant4 - (1)
- Replacement of Boost.Python for binding with pybind11 - (1)
- Provide pkg-config scripts for use by non-CMake build tools - (1)
- Removal of deprecated GNUmake build system - (1)
- Enabling of Tasking Framework as default concurrency scheme - (1)/(2)
- Full support of Apple Silicon chips on macOS - (1)/(2)
- Modularisation of Geant4 Libraries - (1)/(2)
- Integration of VecGeom as external package - (1)/(2)
- Build and Publication of Docker/Singularity Images for Geant4 Releases - (2)
- Review need for dedicated sequential only build mode, supporting sequential applications fully through Tasking Framework - (2)
- Simplified implementation and use of G4Allocator - (2)
- Review access patterns and interfaces for data libraries, evaluate API and format changes - (2)
Electromagnetic physics & optical processes
- Infrastructure:
- Exploit C++17 features in EM libraries where advantageous - (1)
- Removal of obsolete interfaces and classes, improved public interfaces - (1)
- Introduction of gamma linear polarisation option for HEP and low-energy EM physics configuration - (1)/(2)
- High Energy Physics models:
- Improvement to Urban model of fluctuations - (1)
- Review of model for sampling fluctuations of e+- and considering an alternative - (1)/(2)
- Extension to energy limit for positron annihilation to hadrons - (1)/(2)
- Evaluation of new ion ionisation models for moderate and high energies, providing ICRU73 and ICRU90 data driven model at low energy and a smooth transition to the Linhard-Sorensen model at high energy - (2)
- Evaluation of new ion energy fluctuations model - (2)
- Introduction of Bremsstrahlung on atomic electrons at high and moderate energies with triplet production - (2)
- Addition of tau pair production by positrons - (2)
- Low Energy Physics models:
- Introduction of discrete Gold ionisation models - (1)
- Introduction of simulation of photon entanglement - (1)/(2)
- Introduction of ANSTO data libraries and cross-sections - (1)/(2)
- Validation of PIXE cross-sections versus data for protons, alpha, and carbon ions - (1)/(2)
- Review and extension of MicroElec models - (1)/(2)
- Introduction of full set of models based on EPICS2017 - (2)
- New model of the three gamma annihilation - (2)
- New very low-energy photo-electric effect model - (2)
- Optical photon processes and X-ray physics:
- Caching of material property values in optical processes - (1)
- Cleanup of user interface to material property tables - (1)
- Inclusion of a selection of optical material properties - (2)
- Integration of Opticks package on GPUs with new extended example - (2)
- DNA physics & chemistry
- Validation of CPA100 models for adenine, guanine, cytasine, thymine - (1)
- Improvements to DNA physics model - (1)/(2)
- Extension of proton ionisation model above 100 MeV - (1)/(2)
- Pre-chemical stage and DNA damage chain - (1)/(2)
- Extension of Geant4-DNA to FLASH radiotherapy, including novel chemistry approach - (1)/(2)
- Development of transport of chemical ions in magnetic field - (1)/(2)
- Electron CPA100 models for dexoribose and phosphate - (2)
- Extension of relativistic electron ionisation model up to 10 MeV - (2)
- Development of family of Gillespie models - (2)
- Implementation of N2 and C3H8 gas cross-sections for electrons down to 10 eV - (2)
- R & D:
- Evaluation and extension of General process approach - (1)
- Evaluation of G4HepEm project for integration in Geant4; addition of multiple-scattering and gamma processes; support for R&D targeting GPU - (1)/(2)
- Extensions to dark matter particle interactions - (1)/(2)
- Validation & Testing:
- Integration of DNA physics-lists in some geant-val tests - (1)
- Extended validation of HGCal example and integration in geant-val - (1)/(2)
- Introduction of new tests in geant-val for radioactive decay, nuclear medicine and x-ray radiotherapy - (1)/(2)
Geometry
- Interface with navigator based on VecGeom - (1)
- Separate safety computation and its state from navigator - (1)/(2)
- Revision of the transportation processes; specialised transportation processes for neutral and charged particles - (1)/(2)
- Addition of QSS integration methods (Quantized State Simulation) - (1)/(2)
- Review accuracy of boundary crossing in field - (1)/(2)
- Enable VecGeom shapes as default - (1)/(2)
- Review adoption of workspaces for task-based parallelism - (1)/(2)
- Prototype of navigation indexing class - (2)
Hadronic Physics
- Cross-sections
- Improvement of light-ion nuclear cross-sections - (1)/(2)
- Revision of anti-baryon and light anti-ion nuclear cross-sections - (1)/(2)
- Extension of nuclear cross-sections for light hyper-nuclei and anti-hyper-nuclei projectiles - (1)/(2)
- String Models
- Improvement of antiproton and light anti-ion annihilations in FTF - (1)/(2)
- Study of Pt-correlations of hadrons in p-p and pbar-p collisions in FTF and comparison with other models: UrQMD , QGSM , PYTHIA - (1)/(2)
- Hadronic shower improvements of FTF and QGS models - (1)/(2)
- Intra-nuclear Cascade models
- Development for light targets in Bertini Cascade - (1)/(2)
- Code review and improvements to Binary Cascade - (1)/(2)
- Upgrade and maintenance of Liege (INCL++) model - (1)/(2)
- Improvements of ABLA++ model in the production of hyper-nuclei - (1)/(2)
- Precompound/de-excitation Models
- Improvements of de-excitation models: FermiBreakUp, Evaporation, GEM; validation and tuning to data - (1)/(2)
- Extended validation and tuning of cross section and final-state for the gamma-nuclear model - (1)/(2)
- Radioactive Decay Model
- Treatment of super-heavy elements - (1)/(2)
- High Precision (HP) Models
- Improvements for nuclear-fusion applications - (1)/(2)
- Production of Lithium nuclear data libraries, verification and validation - (1)/(2)
- Implementation of an option for forcing ParticleHP to respect event-by-event conservations (energy-momentum, baryonic number, etc.) - (1)/(2)
- Extension of ParticleHP model to higher energies - (1)/(2)
- Implementation of very detailed physics for organic neutron detectors up to 100-200 MeV - (1)/(2)
- Introduction of NuDEX, to generate EM de-excitation cascades - (1)/(2)
- Tool for automatically change charged particle cross-sections adding user experimental data - (1)/(2)
- Low Energy Neutron Data Model
- New reference physics-list using LEND. Update GIDI/LEND interface - (1)/(2)
- Implementation of a new version of MCGIDI, and incorporation in LEND - (1)/(2)
- NCrystal Model
- Addition of new physics (HighNESS project) and technical improvements - (1)/(2)
- Hadronic Framework
- Revision/removal of obsolete classes and interfaces, and update of existing models - (1)/(2)
- Extension of the hadronic framework for light hyper-nuclei and anti-hyper-nuclei - (1)/(2)
- Revision of CreatorModelID - (1)/(2)
- Validation & other models
- Extend validation of charm production for FTF and QGS - (1)/(2)
- Validation of FTF nucleus-nucleus interactions - (1)/(2)
- Interface of tests in geant-val - (1)/(2)
- Hadronic validation with BNL and MIPS data, and with the new high-granularity CMS calorimeter test-beam - (1)/(2)
- Monitoring and documentation of physics lists with the focus on Intensity Frontier (IF) experiments - (1)/(2)
- Study sensitivity of MC predictions to the variations of parameters for FTF/BERT/Pre-compound models - (1)/(2)
- Investigation on the adoption of external decayers - (1)/(2)
- Development and validation of neutrino/lepton – nuclear physics - (1)/(2)
- Maintenance and investigation of possible extension of QMD model - (1)/(2)
- Developments to muonic atom physics - (1)/(2)
- Electromagnetic Dissociation (ED) model: clean-up and inclusion in physics-lists as an option - (1)/(2)
Materials, Generic Processes and Parameterisations
- Fast Simulation
- Modernisation of EM shower parametrisation, including automated tuning procedures - (1)/(2)
- Implementation of example of ML inference using external libraries for calorimetry fast simulation - (1)/(2)
- Geometry Biasing & Importance
- Merging of some examples with generic biasing - (1)/(2)
- Generic Biasing
- Enrich event biasing options: DXTRAN-like biasing, implicit capture, occurrence biasing of charged particles with cross-section changing over the step, AMS (Adaptive Multilevel Splitting) - (1)/(2)
- Extend generic biasing scheme for at rest case - (1)/(2)
- Implementation of a statistical test suite to verify correctness of biased wrt analogue simulation - (1)/(2)
- Materials
- Removal of obsolete interfaces and improvements - (1)/(2)
- Reverse Monte-Carlo
- Migration to multi-threading and improvements - (1)/(2)
- Proton simulation validation - (1)/(2)
- Heavy ions simulation - (1)/(2)
Particles & Track
- Performance improvements and code readability - (1)/(2)
Persistency & Analysis
- Regular maintenance & extensions to GDML - (1)/(2)
- Integration of g4tools/plotting in the G4/vis and UI system - (1)/(2)
- Investigation for a complete move from the output specific managers to G4GenericAnalysisManager - (1)/(2)
- Support for multiple files and multiple output types for n-tuples - (1)/(2)
- Addition of flexibility in resetting/deleting histograms - (1)/(2)
- Review support for writing the same histogram/profile in a file several times (object versions) - (1)/(2)
Physics Lists
- Physics lists validation using test-beam simulations - (1)/(2)
- Support for changing of model parameters in validation tools - (1)/(2)
- Further developments/updates to geant-val portal - (1)/(2)
- Migration of the Validation Database (VDB aka DoSSiER) data to new database - (1)/(2)
- Recommendation/documentation of physics-lists for specific use cases - (1)/(2)
- Review of physics lists code - (1)/(2)
- Produce graphs showing overlap of physics models - (1)/(2)
- Introduction of hyper-nuclei treatment for EM and hadronic physics in physics-list - (1)/(2)
- Documentation of physics lists examples - (1)/(2)
- Clean-up and reorganisation of the DNA physics-lists and combination of standard EM physics with DNA physics - (2)
Run, Event, Detector Response & Scoring
- Enhancements to command-based scoring and new example to demonstrate new features - (1)/(2)
- Finalize task-based parallelism and deploy production release - (2)
- Prototype of sub-event level parallelism and determine usability - (2)
- Reconsider and revisit production thresholds - (2)/(*)
- Implementation of a phase-space file interface to GPS - (2)/(*)
Tracking
- Code review and performance improvements - (1)/(2)
- Re-design and implementation of G4ForceConditions - (1)/(2)
User and Category Interfaces
- Python interface: drop Python2 codes - (1)/(2)
- Python interface: change binding tool from boost-c++ to pybind11 - (1)/(2)
- Parallel UI command dispatcher using ZeroMQ as an alternative MPI (experimental) - (1)/(2)
Visualisation and Graphics Representations
- OpenGL drivers:
- Improvements to toolbar in OpenGL Qt - (1)
- Study code signing/notarising issues for using OpenGL from Geant4-based applications on MacOS - (1)/(2)
- Investigate a way to switch from OpenGL to other technology - (1)/(2)
- OGLFile to produce image files in batch jobs where no graphics card is present - (2)
- Adapt to newer OpenGL versions, exploit new functionalities and replace deprecated calls such as glBegin/glEnd - (2)/(*)
- Other drivers:
- Removal of Wt and Xaw deprecated drivers - (1)
- Refinements and extensions to the OpenInventor Qt Viewer - (1)/(2)
- Improvements and further developments to native Qt3D driver - (1)/(2)
- New tools_sg (TSG) driver based on g4tools - (2)/(*)
- Development of visualisation solutions for iOS and Android devices - (*)
- Implication of the Qt license changes (https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020) - (1)/(2)
- Integrate g4tools/plotting in Geant4 UI system - (1)/(2)
- Updates to gMocrenFile and gMocren to support visualization attributes and other information - (*)
Advanced Examples
- Code review and coding guidelines - (1)/(2)
- Improvement of the webpage and documentation - (1)/(2)
- Measurements of software metrics and statistical analysis over the examples - (1)/(2)
- Development of alternative approaches for LET calculation in hadrontherapy - (1)/(2)/(*)
- Removal of no longer maintained examples - (2)
- Migration to sub-event parallelism where possible - (2)
- Exploit C++17 features where advantageous - (2)
- New example for nanomedicine (gold nanoparticles in X-ray radiotherapy) - (2)/(*)
- New example showing how to import in Geant4 simulations IAEA Phase Space Files - (2)/(*)
Novice & Extended Examples
- Removal of visTutor in Basic/B4 example - (1)
- New visualisation example illustrating how to create a movie - (1)
- New example illustrating generic biasing for "DXTRAN" MCNP-like option and implicit capture - (1)/(2)
- New extended example to demonstrate more scoring functionalities - (1)/(2)
- New hadronic example for demonstrating decays of heavy particles - (1)/(2)
- New radio-biology extended example - (1)/(2)
- Integration of the Opticks package in a new extended example - (1)/(2)
- Extended biasing examples: fix overlap among B02, B03 and GB03 examples - (1)/(2)
- Update of selected EM/hadronic examples with usage of G4Accumulable - (1)/(2)
- Porting of Geant4e and related example to multi-threading - (1)/(2)
- Extension to the DICOM reader to support RT Dose format - (1)/(2)
- Inclusion of new cross-sections for gas materials in the "icsd" Geant4-DNA example - (1)/(2)
- Migration of examples using local SteppingVerbose class to usage of new class, G4SteppingVerboseWithUnits - (1)/(2)
- Review of examples macros and tests (coverage of commands and use-cases) - (1)/(2)
- Complete application of coding guidelines - (1)/(2)
Deadlines
- First semester - 25 June 2021
- Second semester - 10 December 2021
First release: 3 March 2021
Last update: 11 March 2021