2018 Planned Features

Items in this list are related to developments scheduled for the current year.
Improvements, fixes, studies and maintenance items, as well as software management, infrastructure and testing tasks are not mentioned here, as part of routine activity

NOTE: Items marked with (*) may or may not be achieved in 2018.

Geometry

  • Progress in the implementation of the Unified Solids library with progressive adoption of shapes from VecGeom - (1)/(2)
  • Implement prototype navigator based on VecGeom - (2)
  • Adoption of interpolation in intersection calculation in magnetic field propagation - (2)
  • Profiling and optimisation of multiple navigation - (*)
  • Separate safety computation and state from navigator - (*)
  • Prototype of specialised transportation processes for neutral and charged particles - (*)

 

Hadronic Physics

  • Cross-sections
    • New version of G4NEUTRONXS data set - (1)/(2)
    • R&D on hadronic cross sections - (1)/(2)
  • High Precision (HP) Models
    • Maintenance and update of ParticleHP and IAEA Geant4 neutron data libraries - (1)/(2)
  • Intra-nuclear Cascade models
    • Extension of pi+/pi-/pi0 - nucleon 6,7,8,9-body final states to include strange pair production in Bertini - (1)
    • Code review and eventual re-engineering of Bertini - (1)/(2)
    • Code review and improvements to Binary model - (1)/(2)
    • Completion of strangeness physics in INCL++ - (1)/(2)
    • Hypernuclei production in ABLA++ - (1)/(2)
  • Precompound/de-excitation
    • Finalization of new GEM (Generalized Evaporation Model) - (1)/(2)
    • Modification of Fermi Break-Up model with addition of gamma transition channels - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement of the parameterisation of the probabilities of evaporation - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements to pre-equilibrium and de-excitation models - (1)/(2)
  • Elastic and Quasi-elastic Models
    • Review of hadron elastic models - (1)/(2)
    • R&D on hadronic elastic scattering - (1)/(2)
  • Low Energy Neutron Data Model
    • Development for neutron- and gamma-induced reactions - (1)/(2)
    • New version of LEND/GIDI - (1)/(2)
  • Radioactive Decay
    • Inclusion of beta-delayed emissions of neutrons - (1)
    • More correct partial K, L1, L2, L3, M1-M5 electron capture probability; implementation of electron capture form N shell - (1)
    • Z-dependent tables of electron capture coefficients - (1)
    • RDM biasing improvements - (1)/(2)
    • Extensions to allow for the simulation of Super Heavy Elements (SHE) - (1)/(2)
  • String Models
    • Finalization of FTF model description of NA61/SHINE data on pi- C interactions at 158 and 350 GeV/c - (1)/(2)
    • Tuning and validation of QGS - (1)/(2)
    • Study of potential extensions to QGS: gamma, electron and neutrino interactions and inclusion of hard processes - (1)/(2)
    • Code improvements of string models (FTF and QGS) - (1)/(2)
    • Tuning of FTF parameters for K+P and K+A interactions - (1)/(2)
    • Tuning and validation of FTF model for strange meson's and hyperon's production in anti-proton interactions - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements and validation of HIJING for p-Pb and p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at LHC - (1)/(2)
    • Hadronic shower effects of string models - (1)/(2)
    • Interfacing with Fortran EPOS - (2)
    • Study of experimental data on charm particle production in proton and antiproton interactions with protons and nuclei - (*)
    • Implementation of charm particle production in FTF model - (*)
  • Validation
    • Composition, monitoring and validation of physics lists for the Intensity Frontier - (1)/(2)
    • Hadronic validation with BNL and MIPs data, and with the new high-granularity CMS test-beam - (1)/(2)
    • Development of the infrastructure for studying sensitivity of MC predictions to the variations of the model parameters - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of interfaces of hadronic models to be used by GENIE neutrino interaction code - (1)/(2)
    • Addition of experiments test-beam simulations to hadronic physics validation - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of cascade models with the n_TOF evaluated neutron flux - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of low-energy models - (1)/(2)
  • Improved integration of NCrystal in Geant4 - (1)/(2)
  • Improvements to muonic atoms - (1)/(2)
  • Low-energy, entry-channel models: SMF and BLOB - (1)/(2)
  • Implementation of a Nuclear Coulomb excitation model - (1)/(2)
  • R&D for neutrino-nucleus final state generator - (1)/(2)
  • Addition of neutrino physics - (1)/(2)
  • Investigation on possible simplifications of the hadronic framework - (1)/(2)

 

Low-energy Electromagnetic physics

  • Atomic deexcitation
    • Extension of shell ionisation cross sections - (*)
  • DNA
    • Updated handling of upper energy limits for physics models - (2)
    • Updated thermalization for chemistry models - (2)
    • New examples (splitting, svalue, chem5) - (2)
    • Addition of n-tuple merging into examples - (2)
    • New and/or alternative cross-section models - (*)
    • New chemistry models - (*)
  • Livermore models
    • Addition of elastic scattering processes from JAEA - (2)
    • Updated constructors - (2)
    • Upgrade of Livermore electron ionisation - (*)
    • New model for polarized pair production in nuclear field - (*)
    • Improvement of pair production in the electron field - (*)
    • Finalize migration and testing of polarized gamma models to same software design as non-polarized Livermore models - (*)
  • MicroElec models
    • Extension to new materials - (*)
  • Monash U. models
    • Complete recalculation of atomic electron momentum PDFs and Compton profiles for elements Z=1 to Z=100 - (*)
    • Implementation of a new low energy photoelectric absorption model - (*)
  • Penelope models
    • Updated constructors - (2)
    • Updated physics processes - (2)
  • Validation
    • Ongoing within G4MSBG initiative - (2)
    • Validation of photon cross sections - (*)
    • Validation of electron backscattering - (*)
    • Validation of proton scattering - (*)

 

Materials, Generic Processes and Parameterisations

  • Materials
    • Redesign of the materials property table - (1)/(2)
  • Geometry Biasing & Importance
    • Comparison between generic and importance biasing - (1)/(2)
    • Investigate extension of design to support for multiple particle types - (1)/(2)
  • Differential cross-sections
    • Implementation of new elastic differential cross-section class to be used in DXTRAN biasing option - (1)/(2)
  • Generic Biasing
    • Enrich event biasing options: leading particle biasing, DXTRAN-like biasing, implicit capture - (1)/(2)
    • Extend generic biasing scheme for at rest case - (1)/(2)
    • Prototype: biasing of charged particles (with cross-section changing over the step); occurrence biasing (continuous density change inside a same volume); material/isotope biasing; Woodcock tracking - (2)
  • Fast Simulation
    • Improve usability enriching physics list constructor of fast simulation - (1)/(2)
    • Revision and C++11 adoption for GFlash model - (1)/(2)

 

Particles & Track

  • Improvements in readability - (1)/(2)
  • Review of production thresholds - (1)/(2)
  • Redesign unified way of tracking ions, muonic atoms, radicals and electrons/holes/phonons - (2)

 

Persistency & Analysis

  • Merging of HDF5 output format in MT mode - (1)/(2)
  • Merging ntuples with Root format in MPI mode - (*)

 

Physics Lists

  • Merging of existing factory G4GenericPhysicsList and G4alt::G4PhysListFactory - (1)/(2)
  • Elimination of template mechanism in physics lists - (1)/(2)
  • Deletion of builders and physics processes in multi-threaded mode - (1)/(2)

 

Run, Event, Detector Response & Scoring

  • Multi-threading:
    • Migration from posix threads to std::thread - (1)
    • Study support of MT on Windows platforms - (1)/(2)
    • Workspace and memory cleanup in MT - (1)/(2)
    • Finalize new design of threads (allow threads to join/leave workers pool) - (2)
    • Porting of material scanner to MT - (2)
    • Hooks for sub-event level parallelism - (2)
  • Implementation of a phase-space file interface to GPS - (2)
  • Revision of production thresholds- (2)/(*)

 

Standard Electromagnetic physics & optical processes

  • Infrastructure:
    • Evaluation on existing models and R&D on possible new for search of particles beyond the Standard Model - (1)/(2)
    • Study on effect of high energy muon scattering due to high energy radiative processes - (2)
  • Bremsstrahlung and Gamma models:
    • Review and improvement of Seltzer-Berger model - (1)
    • Improve muon production cross-section by gammas at threshold - (1)
    • Introduction of bremsstrahlung on atomic electrons at high and moderate energies with triplet production - (2)
    • Validation and improvement of the gamma conversion models including cross-section and final state generation in the full energy range - (2)
    • Introduction of direction splitting for bremsstrahlung - (2)
  • Ionisation processes:
    • Alternative ion ionisation models for moderate energies - (1)
    • Review of model for sampling fluctuations of e+- as alternative model - (1)/(2)
    • Further tuning of the Urban model of fluctuations - (2)
  • Multiple and single scattering:
    • Updates and tuning to Goudsmit-Saunderson model - (1)
    • Tuning of lateral displacement in the Urban model - (1)
    • Improve backscattering in the Urban model - (2)
    • Introduce Mott corrections to WVI and SS models - (2)
    • Evaluation of WentzelVI model performance with 2nd order corrections enabled - (2)/(*)
    • Study on displacement beyond boundary algorithm - (2)/(*)
  • Positron annihilation
    • Incorporation of the three gamma annihilation - (1)
    • Improvement to muon production cross-section at threshold - (1)
    • Addition of tau pair production by positrons - (2)
    • Extension of energy limit for positron annihilation to hadrons - (2)/(*)
  • Optical photon processes and X-ray physics:
    • Extension to transition radiation model - (1)
    • Review and updated interface to material properties - (1)
    • Improvements to synchrotron radiation angular distribution - (2)
    • Addition of X-ray boundary processes - (2)/(*)

 

Tracking

  • Code cleanup and performance improvements - (1)/(2)
  • Redesign unified way of tracking ions, muonic atoms, radicals and electrons/holes/phonons - (2)

 

User and Category Interfaces

  • Improvements to ZeroMQ interface / Jupyter frontend - (1)/(2)
  • Improvementa to logic of UI manager and for detection of UI command failures when a command is not executed - (1)/(2)
  • Updates to the Wt driver - (2)

 

Visualisation and Graphics Representations

  • OpenGL drivers:
    • Improvementa to toolbar in OpenGL Qt - (2)
    • Adapt to newer OpenGL versions, exploit new functionalities and replace deprecated calls such as glBegin/glEnd - (2)/(*)
  • Other drivers:
    • New driver for export to format readable by Paraview - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements to Wt driver - (2)
    • Updates to gMocrenFile and gMocren to support visualization attributes and other information - (*)
    • New driver G4DAE exporter for export in Collada format - (*)
    • Updates to OpenInventor - (*)
    • Development of visualization solutions for iOS and Android devices - (*)
    • New PDF3D driver - (*)
    • Change from flat format to hierarchical format in VRML - (*)
  • Full support for visualisation of Boolean shapes - (1)/(2)
  • New tool to support high resolution transparent visualization with ability to rotate and zoom - (*)
  • Addition of visualization attributes to handle GDML format - (*)
  • Support of user-drawn primitives in multi-threaded mode - (*)
  • Integrated visualization of field lines - (*)

 

Advanced Examples

  • Migration of medical_linac to use parallel geometry - (1)
  • Revision of analysis, geometry and validation scripts for hadrontherapy - (1)/(2)
  • Code review and coding guidelines - (1)/(2)
  • Introduction of some C++11 specific features/utilities in the examples - (2)
  • Development of alternative approaches for LET calculation in hadrontherapy - (2)/(*)

Novice & Extended Examples

  • Review of examples macros and tests - (1)
  • Switch to use new default random number generator MixMax - (2)
  • Complete application of coding guidelines - (2)
  • Continue code review - (2)
  • New example illustrating generic biasing for "DXTRAN" MCNP-like option and implicit capture - (*)
  • Extended biasing examples: fix overlap among B02, B03 and GB03 examples - (*)
  • Updating selected examples with usage of G4Accumulable - (*)
  • Porting of Geant4e and related example to multi-threading - (*)
  • Extension to the DICOM reader to support RT Dose format - (*)

Deadlines

  1. First semester - 30 June 2018
  2. Second semester - 7 December 2018

First release: 8 March 2018
Last update: 8 November 2018