CERN Accelerating science

2022 Planned Features

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 2022.

 

Configuration & Software Management

  • Review mandatory and optional compiler flags needed to build and link to Geant4 - (1)
  • Move to use single environment variable to point to a default location of data libraries - (1)
  • Provide pkg-config scripts for use by non-CMake build tools - (1)
  • Review use and integration of performance monitoring tools - (1)/(2)
  • Review locations and documentation for unit and integration tests - (1)/(2)
  • Modularisation of Geant4 Libraries - (1)/(2)
  • Integration of VecGeom testing as external package - (1)/(2)
  • Review access patterns and interfaces for data libraries, evaluate API and format changes - (2)
  • Review need for dedicated sequential only build mode, supporting sequential applications fully through Tasking Framework - (2)/(*)
  • Removal of deprecated GNUmake build system - (2)/(*)
  • Replacement of Boost.Python for binding with pybind11 - (2)/(*)

 

Electromagnetic physics & optical processes

  • Infrastructure:
    • Further optimisation of code used by EM processes/models at initialisation - (1)
    • Reorganisation of code for integral method - (1)
    • Establish mechanism of usage of alternative models/algorithms for sampling of energy loss fluctuations for different particle types and geometrical regions - (1)
  • High Energy Physics models:
    • Evaluation of Linhard-Sorensen ion ionisation model - (1)
    • Introduction of EPICS2017 cross-sections as an option for standard gamma models - (1)
    • Development and testing for polarized gamma transport - (1)/(2)
    • Evaluation of new ion energy fluctuations model - (2)
    • Introduce bremsstrahlung on atomic electrons at high and moderate energies with triplet production - (2)
    • Extension of energy limit for positron annihilation to hadrons - (2)
    • Implementation of muon pair production by e+- - (2)
  • Low Energy Physics models:
    • Introduction of EPICS2017 electron ionisation model - (1)
    • Validation of ANSTO PIXE data - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement to MicroElec models and extended list of materials - (1)/(2)
    • Use of EPICS2017 cross-section in G4LowEPComptonModel - (2)
    • Provision of ionisation cross-sections for 0.1 to 100 MeV for Li, C and O ions based on ECPSSR - (2)
    • Deployment of a new model of the three gamma annihilation - (2)
  • Optical photon processes and X-ray physics:
    • Maitenence and optimisation of optical classes - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of Opticks package on GPUs through example - (1)/(2)
  • DNA physics & chemistry
    • Incorporation of proton cross-sections in liquid water above 100 MeV for Geant4-DNA models - (1)
    • Development of N2 and C3H8 DNA cross-sections - (1)
    • Validation for Human normal and malignant cell irradiations by ions - (1)/(2)
    • Radiobiological Data Acquisition - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement of DNA physics model for ions - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of the Relativistic Option 4 electron inelastic model - (1)/(2)
    • Development of a discrete model for protons using dielectric response function up to 100 MeV - (1)/(2)
    • Study of the effect of step size and cuts on radiation dose in small size volumes using Standard and DNA physics - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of electron physics models in dexorybose and phosphate - (2)
    • Development on an alternative chemistry framework using IRT and Gillespie in a single simulation - (2)
  • R & D:
    • Implement optional Woodcock tracking of photons per geometrical region - (1)
    • Evaluation of G4HepEm project for integration in Geant4; addition of missing components; support for R&D targeting GPU - (1)/(2)
    • Investigate further optimisation possibilities provided by the G4HepEm environment such as opportunistic multi-particle tracking - (1)/(2)
    • Investigate possibilities that might accelerate the EM shower simulation in HEP including high granularity detectors and sampling calorimeters - (1)/(2)
    • DPM like multiple-scattering modelling and complete DPM like EM simulation per particle type and detector region - (1)/(2)
  • Validation & Testing:
    • Integration of DNA physics-lists in some geant-val tests - (1)
    • Introduction of new tests in geant-val for radioactive decay, nuclear medicine and x-ray radiotherapy - (1)/(2)

 

Geometry

  • Validation of interface with navigator based on VecGeom - (1)
  • New QSS integration methods (Quantized State Simulation) - (1)
  • Alternative BVH navigator and optimisation structure - (1)/(2)
  • Review accuracy of boundary crossing in field - (1)/(2)
  • Separate safety computation and its state from navigator - (2)
  • Revision of the transportation processes; specialised transportation processes for neutral and charged particles - (2)
  • Prototype study on surface bounded volumes in VecGeom - (2)
  • Prototype of navigation indexing class - (2)/(*)​

​

Hadronic Physics

  • Cross-sections
    • Study low-energy corrections for light anti-ion nuclear cross-sections - (1)/(2)
    • Extension of nuclear cross-sections for light hyper-nuclei and anti-hyper-nuclei projectiles - (1)/(2)
    • Provision of full integral option for frequently used charged hadrons - (1)/(2)
  • String Models
    • Improvement of the decays of charmed hadrons using data of PDG - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement of antiproton and light anti-ion annihilations in FTF - (1)/(2)
    • Correct introduction of the formation time in FTF and QGS - (1)/(2)
    • First extension of FTF for light hypernuclei and anti-hypernuclei projectiles - (1)/(2)
    • Investigation in using alternative sets of tuning parameters in FTF - (1)/(2)
    • Hadronic shower improvements of FTF and QGS models - (1)/(2)
  • Intra-nuclear Cascade models
    • Code modernisation and improvements to Binary Cascade - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements of ABLA++ model in the production of pionic nuclei and their evaporation to pions - (1)/(2)
    • Extension for anti-proton in Liege (INCL++) model - (1)/(2)
  • Precompound/de-excitation Models
    • Implementation of a simple de-excitation treatment for light hypernuclei and anti-hypernuclei - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements in probability of transitions in pre-compound and de-excitation models - (1)/(2)
    • Extended validation and tuning of cross section and final-state for the gamma-nuclear model - (1)/(2)
  • Elastic Scattering Models
    • Improvement in the elastic scattering of anti-baryons and light anti-nuclei on target nuclei - (1)/(2)
    • Simple elastic scattering treatment for hypernuclei and anti-hypernuclei on target nuclei - (1)/(2)
  • Radioactive Decay Model
    • Improvement of the spectrum of beta decays - (1)/(2)
  • High Precision (HP) Models
    • Improvement of the gamma de-excitation in ParticleHP - (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)
    • 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)
    • Support for thermal scattering data and development of new variance reduction techniques (e.g. AMS and adaptive multi-level splitting) - (1)/(2)
    • New G4NDL4.7 data library: extended thermal neutron data and updated inelastic gamma data - (1)/(2)
  • Low Energy Neutron Data Model
    • Updates to LEND, GIDI and MCGIDI - (1)/(2)
  • NCrystal Model
    • Update to Geant4-NCrystal hooks and support for multi-threading - (1)/(2)
    • Thermal neutron scattering in liquids - (1)/(2)
  • Validation & other models
    • Validation of charm production for FTF and QGS - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of FTF nucleus-nucleus interactions - (1)/(2)
    • Study sensitivity of MC predictions to the variations of parameters for FTF/BERT/Pre-compound models - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of calorimeter test-beams for hadronic validation in geant-val - (1)/(2)
    • Use of fixed-target data and calorimeter data for hadronic validation - (1)/(2)
    • Monitoring and documentation of physics lists with the focus on Intensity Frontier (IF) experiments - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of neutron physics with the TARC test - (1)/(2)
    • Validation and testing of thermal neutron transport - (1)/(2)
  • Development and validation of neutrino/lepton – nuclear physics - (1)/(2)
  • Muonic atoms, molecules, and catalyzed fusion physics - (1)/(2)
  • Adoption of external decayers and use of Pythia8 as an external generator - (1)/(2)

 

Materials, Generic Processes and Parameterisations

  • Fast Simulation
    • Modernisation of EM shower parameterisation - (1)/(2)
    • Machine Learning studies on the current model, meta learning for real detector geometries (FCC geometry) - (1)/(2)
    • Revision of Fast simulation framework - (1)/(2)
    • Continuing revision of GFlash models - (1)/(2)
    • Investigation on relevance of using a specialised tracking class for triggering fast simulation - (1)/(2)
  • Generic Biasing
    • Biasing of charged particle interaction occurrence - (1)/(2)
    • Prototyping of DXTRAN-like functionality - (1)/(2)
    • Extend generic biasing scheme for at rest case - (1)/(2)
  • Materials
    • Code improvements - (1)/(2)
  • Reverse Monte-Carlo
    • Migration to multi-threading and improvements - (1)/(2)
    • Use of Reverse MC in parallel geometries - (1)/(2)

 

Particles & Tracking

  • Performance tests and improvements - (1)/(2)
  • Polishing up code readability and documentation - (1)/(2)
  • Re-design and implementation of G4ForceConditions - (1)/(2)

 

Persistency & Analysis

  • Regular maintenance & extensions to GDML - (1)/(2)
  • Support for multiple output types for n-tuples - (1)/(2)
  • Addition of flexibility in resetting/deleting histograms - (1)/(2)
  • Review support for writing same histogram/profile in a file several times (object versions) - (1)/(2)
  • Organisation of third-party code (HDF5, expat, zlib) in externals/g4tools - (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)
  • Completion of hyper-nuclei treatment for EM and hadronic physics in physics-list - (1)/(2)
  • Documentation of physics lists examples - (1)/(2)

​

Run, Event, Detector Response & Scoring

  • Reorganization of Run, Tasking and Event categories to be suitable for task-based sub-event parallelism - (1)
  • Refinement of scorer functionalities and their drawing methods - (1)/(2)
  • First prototype of task-based sub-event parallelism - (2)
  • Support of IAEA phase space files for GPS - (2)
  • First simple example of task-based sub-event parallelism - (2)/(*)

 

User and Category Interfaces

  • Code updates to C++11/14/17 style - (1)/(2)
  • CMake migration for Python interface - (1)/(2)

 

Visualisation and Graphics Representations

  • OpenGL drivers:
    • Migration to Qt6 - (1)
    • Improvements to toolbar in OpenGL Qt - (1)
    • Improvements on sceneTree - (2)
    • Fix issue with parametrized volumes - (2)
    • Adapt to newer OpenGL versions, exploit new functionalities and replace deprecated calls such as glBegin/glEnd - (2)/(*)
  • Open Inventor:
    • Refinements and extensions to the Open Inventor Qt Viewer - (1)/(2)
    • Work on reference path to move through the geometry - (1)/(2)
    • Improved use/install of Coin library - (1)/(2)
    • Interaction OI viewer / UI Qt - (1)/(2)
  • Other drivers:
    • Vtk driver: fully develop large renderings for medical applications - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements and further developments to native Qt3D driver - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements and further developments to tools_sg (TSG) driver based on g4tools - (1)/(2)
    • Provide 2min videos for each viewer - (2)
    • Development of visualisation solutions for iOS and Android devices - (2)/(*)

 

Advanced Examples

  • Development of a specific example for proton tomography - (1)/(2)
  • Further developments of in-silico experimental microdosimetry in the Radioprotection example - (1)/(2)
  • Development of a mammography example - (1)/(2)
  • Code review, migration to C++17 and coding guidelines - (1)/(2)
  • Measurements of software metrics and statistical analysis over the examples - (1)/(2)
  • Development of a SPring-8 synchrotron x-ray polarimetry example for testing low energy polarised gamma-ray physics - (2)
  • New example showing how to import in Geant4 simulations IAEA Phase Space Files - (2)/(*)

 

Novice & Extended Examples

  • Development of Pol02 extended example - (1)
  • New example illustrating generic biasing for "DXTRAN" MCNP-like option and implicit capture - (1)/(2)
  • New hadronic example for monitoring particle fluence - (1)/(2)
  • New gflash parameterisation example for sampling calorimeter - (1)/(2)
  • New example for sub-event parallelism - (1)/(2)
  • New radio-biology extended example - (1)/(2)
  • Validation and development with protons and He4 ions in molecularDNA example - (1)/(2)
  • New example for the RBE/LET calculation - (1)/(2)
  • Calculation of microdosimetry spectra in a cylindrical domain at the specific water depth imitating silicon detector - (1)/(2)
  • New medical example for ultra-high dose rate - (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)
  • Add the possibility to use the SBS method in the DNA "scavenger" example - (1)/(2)
  • Implement DNA damage in plasmids with IRT - (1)/(2)
  • Review of examples macros and tests (coverage of commands and use-cases) - (1)/(2)
  • Complete application of coding guidelines - (1)/(2)

Deadlines

  1. First semester - 30 June 2022
  2. Second semester - 9 December 2022

First release: 17 March 2022
Last update: 17 March 2022