Computing Seminar

The Geant4 Toolkit Today

John Apostolakis/IT

Abstract

Geant4 is a detector simulation toolkit designed for the new generation of High Energy Physics experiments as well as for nuclear physics, medical and space applications, radiation background studies.

Approximately three years since the release of the first Geant4 production version, significant results are already available from many applications of Geant4 in a variety of domains, such as HEP experiments, space and medical applications. New results are produced continuously. An overview of the status of Geant4 and highlight results of its application will be presented.

Geant4 exploits advanced software engineering techniques and Object Oriented (OO) technology to improve the validation of physics results and to empower the distributed software development. Problem domain decomposition and OO Analysis and Design have given a clean structure of class categories.

Geant4 provides functionalities for all the domains of detector simulation: Geometry, Tracking, Detector Response, Run, Event and Track management, Particle Data Group compliant particle management, Visualisation and User Interface. Geant4 provides a large variety of Physics Processes and models. The processes and models go from electromagnetic physics to hadronics, from optics to radiation background, from cosmic muons to theoretical generators models - spanning a wide energy range, as required by Geant4's multi-disciplinary nature.

The Geant4 Object-Oriented design allows the user to understand, extend, or customise the toolkit in all the domains. At the same time, the modularity of the GEANT4 software allows the user to use only the components he/she needs.

About the speaker: John Apostolakis is the simulation section leader of API group in IT division. He is spokesperson of the Geant4 collaboration.