2024 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 2024.

Configuration & Software Management

  • Review locations and documentation for unit and integration tests - (1)
  • Review use and integration of performance monitoring tools - (1)/(2)
  • Modularisation of Geant4 Libraries - (1)/(2)
  • Review optimization levels and options for Release builds - (1)/(2)
  • Add/Support additional platforms and configurations for testing - (1)/(2)
  • Provide pkg-config scripts for use by non-CMake build tools - (2)

Electromagnetic physics & optical processes

  • Infrastructure:
    • Apply clang-tidy and clang-format to EM classes - (1)/(2)
    • Remove calls IsMaster() from all classes and sub-packages - (1)/(2)
  • High Energy Physics models:
    • Further development on EM models for beam transport and interactions in bending crystals; implementation of coherent pair production model - (1)/(2)
    • Calculation in LO and NLO of QED-corrected cross-sections of electron and muon scattering on nuclei - (1)/(2)
    • Calculation of electron and muon pair production in screened Coulomb field - (1)/(2)
    • Development of a new 5D angular generator for e+e- pair production - (1)/(2)
    • Support and R&D for the ATLAS TRT (X-Ray transition radiation) - (1)/(2)
    • Provide an option to use EPICS-2017 data for standard gamma processes - (1)/(2)
    • Include 3-gamma annihilation models into EM physics lists - (1)/(2)
  • Low Energy Physics models:
    • Addition of revised momentum profiles for the Compton scattering - (1)/(2)
    • Addition of extra materials to MicroElec models - (1)/(2)
    • Evaluation of a possibility of introducing of plasma state and energy loss models in plasma - (1)/(2)
    • Evaluation for low-energy extention of the PAI model - (1)/(2)
    • Development of a processes of Bragg reflection of X-Rays from outer and inner crystals surfices for slabs and for cilinder shells - (1)/(2)
    • Extension of quantum entaglement effect on the Compton scattering for full gamma scattering history - (1)/(2)
    • Continue development of computations for heavy ion ionisation and de-excitation using full j-j approach. Preparation of precomputed tables of cross sections - (1)/(2)
    • Verification of reverse/adjoint physics models for thin and thick shielding and application to space scenarios - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of processes of production and decay of orto- and para- positronium - (1)/(2)
  • Optical photon processes and X-ray physics:
    • Maintenance and optimisation of optical classes - (1)/(2)
    • Further integration of Opticks package; provide example of optical processes implemented on GPU and other processes at CPU; demonstration of tracing of optical photons in liquid Argon TPC - (1)/(2)
    • Opticks integration: addition of Scintillation and Wavelength Shifting processes - (1)/(2)
    • Implement UI commands and builders to include X-ray refraction and reflection on top of standard physics - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of quantum entanglement effect to optical photons - (1)/(2)
  • DNA physics & chemistry
    • Improvement of DNA physics model for ions - (1)/(2)
    • Extension of Geant4-DNA to be used for space radiation protection - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of the option4 relativistic electron inelastic model - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of electron impact inelastic cross-sections for gold nanoparticles using relativistic plane wave approximation and taking into account surface effects - (1)/(2)
    • Development of models for electron interactions in atmosphere - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of propan cross-section - (1)/(2)
    • Integration of Li cross-sections - (1)/(2)
    • Optimization of thermalization distance of water displacement for chemistry applications - (1)/(2)
    • Study on homogeneous chemistry and boundary conditions - (1)/(2)
  • R & D - G4HepEm:
    • Refactor data structures in G4HepEm, especially macroscopic cross-sections: move from plain arrays to more structured data - (1)
    • Configuration per detector region in G4HepEm: e.g. provide the possibility to use different MSC stepping in different detector regions - (1)/(2)
    • Add missing gamma- and lepto-nuclear cross-section and implement connection layer for tracks from G4HepEm to native Geant4 tracking for sampling of final state of nuclear processes - (1)/(2)
    • Implement the “general process”-like handling of the macroscopic cross sections - (1)/(2)
    • Implement the possibility of Woodcock tracking of gamma per region - (1)/(2)
    • Extend and optimize tracking algorithms per particle type - (1)/(2)
  • Validation & Testing:
    • Validation of G4HepEm for ATLAS and CMS - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of EM and hadronic models for medical applications - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of Geant4-DNA using radiobiological experiments on human skin fibroblasts at ANSTO - (1)/(2)
    • Benchmarking ELSEPA and Uehara elastic models - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of IRT-syn at different dose rates - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of human normal and malignant cell irradiation with ion species for estimation of RBE dependence on LET and evaluation of DSB as a function of post-irradiation time - (1)/(2)

Geometry & Field Transport

  • New UI commands for controlling field parameters - (1)
  • Optimisation of QSS field driver (Quantized State Simulation) - (1)
  • Review accuracy of boundary crossing in field - (1)/(2)
  • Reduce geometry initialization time using multi-threading - (1)/(2)
  • Investigate use of multi-threading to speed up overlap checking and volume calculation - (1)/(2)
  • Investigate alternative implementation of navigation history - (2)
  • Complete prototype on surface bounded volumes in VecGeom - (2)
  • Complete implementation of high-order “symplectic” integrator for accelerator applications - (2)/(*)

Hadronic Physics

  • String Models
    • Verification of pion-nuclear interactions in FTF and QGS models; revision of fragmentations in both models and of probabilities of FTF processes - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement and validation of antiproton, antineutron and light anti-nuclei annihilations in FTF - (1)/(2)
    • Review of Birks’ treatment in hadronic calorimeters to take into account the interplay between string (FTF) and intra-nuclear cascade (BERT) models - (1)/(2)
    • Code improvements of FTF and QGS models - (1)/(2)
  • Intra-nuclear Cascade models
    • Improvement of the Feynman-x distribution in Bertini-like model - (1)/(2)
    • Code modernisation and improvements to Binary Cascade - (1)/(2)
    • Extension of ABLA nuclear de-excitation for super-heavy nuclei up to Z=118 - (1)/(2)
  • Precompound/de-excitation Models
    • Reorganization of the de-excitation module: improvement to design, make de-excitation handler flexible to consider internal conversions - (1)/(2)
  • High Precision (HP) Models
    • Extension of ParticleHP model to higher energies - (1)/(2)
    • Introduction of NuDEX, to generate EM de-excitation cascades - (1)/(2)
    • Support for thermal scattering data and development of new variance reduction techniques (e.g. AMS and adaptive multi-level splitting) - (1)/(2)
    • Implementation of the description of the Unresolved Resonance Region (URR) with probability tables - (1)/(2)
    • Build of a data library of Doppler-broaden cross-sections at room temperature - (1)/(2)
    • Use G4PhotoEvaporation for nuclear de-excitation via gamma emissions - (1)/(2)
    • Improvement and speed-up of the code - (1)/(2)
  • Low Energy Neutron Data Model
    • Updates to LEND and GIDI - (1)/(2)
  • NCrystal Model
    • Updates to NCrystal-Geant4 hooks - (1)/(2)
  • Other models
    • Development and validation of neutrino/lepton - nuclear physics: neutrino oscillation in matter - (1)/(2)
    • Use of Pythia8 as an external generator: application for LDMX experiment - (1)/(2)
    • Muonic atoms development, catalyzed fusion physics and improvements in atomic capture physics - (1)/(2)
    • Emulation of hadronic models with generative graph neural networks - (1)/(2)
    • Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model for light ions (LIQMD) - (1)/(2)
  • Validation & other models
    • Validation of charm production for FTF and QGS - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of FTF nucleus-nucleus interactions, including the new diffraction dissociation description, in the range 3 < Ecms < 20 GeV - (1)/(2)
    • Further study of sensitivity of the 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)
    • Hadronic validation of selected releases using thin-target data and maintenance of selected tests - (1)/(2)
    • Monitoring and documentation of physics lists with the focus on Intensity Frontier (IF) experiments - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of Geant4 with n_TOF and neutron flux - (1)/(2)
    • Validation of electro-production using electron beam at JLab’s energies - (1)/(2)
  • New Hadronic Datasets G4ENSDFSTATEDATA, G4LEVELGAMMADATA, G4RADIOACTIVEDATA - (1)/(2)

Materials, Generic Processes and Parameterisations

  • Fast Simulation
    • Implementation and validation of GFlash code with general fast sim tools - (1)/(2)
    • Continuing revision of GFlash models - (1)/(2)
    • Inclusion of detailed vs fast simulation comparison/validation tests into geant-val - (1)/(2)
    • Extensions to Par04 example - (1)/(2)
  • Reverse Monte-Carlo
    • Migration to multi-threading and improvements - (1)/(2)
    • Use of Reverse MC in parallel geometries; investigation of discrepancies for thick shield cases - (1)/(2)
    • Assess porting validations to geant-val - (1)/(2)
  • 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)
    • Improvements to parallel world scoring - (1)/(2)
    • Improvements to importance biasing and extension to multiple particle type biasing - (1)/(2)
    • Inclusion of analog vs biased simulation comparison/validation tests into geant-val - (1)/(2)
  • Materials
    • Code improvements - (1)/(2)

Particles & Tracking

  • Update of particle properties to latest PDG data - (1)/(2)
  • 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)
  • Addition of support for parallel geometries in ASCII - (1)/(2)
  • Accummulables: add support for most frequent std collections (array, vector) - (1)/(2)

Physics Lists & Validation Tools

  • Review of physics lists code - (1)/(2)
  • Recommendation/documentation of physics-lists for specific use cases - (1)/(2)
  • Produce graphs showing overlap of models - (1)/(2)
  • Refinement of hyper-nuclei treatment for EM and hadronic physics in physics-list - (1)/(2)
  • Improve configuration of combined processed and models per region - (1)/(2)
  • Review organisation of library structure to allow for optional libraries build - (1)/(2)
  • Documentation of physics lists examples - (1)/(2)
  • 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 a repository - (1)/(2)

Run, Event, Detector Response & Scoring

  • First phase implementation of task-based sub-event parallelism - (1)/(2)
  • Review of scoring in parallel world - (1)/(2)
  • Enhancements to material scanner utility - (1)/(2)
  • Interface to HepMC3 - (2)

Visualisation and Graphics Representations

  • OpenGL drivers:
    • Complete support of Qt6 - (1)
    • Rubberband picking (2)/(*)
    • Adapt to newer OpenGL versions, exploit new functionalities and replace deprecated calls such as glBegin/glEnd - (2)/(*)
  • Vtk driver:
    • Jupyter notebook interface to VTK (via KitWare Trame) - (1)/(2)
    • Shared AR viewer target export - (1)/(2)
    • USD(Z) export - (1)/(2)
    • Solid cylinder for trajectory (option) to enable usage of exported data in a wide range of 3D applications - (1)/(2)
    • Physicially based rendering (PBR) for VTK - (1)/(2)
    • Short video on VTK driver - (1)/(2)
  • Open Inventor:
    • Refinements and extensions to the Open Inventor Qt Viewer - (1)/(2)
    • Work on reference path to move through the geometry - (*)
    • Improved use/install of Coin library - (*)
  • Other drivers:
    • Improvements and further developments to native Qt3D driver (text, transparency…) - (2)
    • Improvements and further developments to tools_sg (TSG) driver based on g4tools - (2)
    • Ability to change color map according to preset maps - (2)/(*)
    • Development of visualisation solutions for iOS and Android devices - (2)/(*)

Advanced Examples

  • Improvement to MicroElec example to show the use of novel electron low energy cross-sections for solid state materials beyond silicon - (1)/(2)
  • Further developments of in-silico experimental microdosimetry in the Radioprotection example - (1)/(2)
  • Development of a mammography example - (1)/(2)
  • Implementation of pre-clinical, mice PET images to evaluate a dose distribution for new drugs - (1)/(2)
  • Upgrade of the medical_linac example - (1)/(2)
  • Design of realistic phantoms of C. elegans in the stim_pixe_tomography example - (1)/(2)
  • Development of a new geometry reproducing some dosimeters used in FLASH radiotherapy in the eFLASH_radiotherapy example - (1)/(2)
  • Development of new detectors, SiC and TEPC microdosimeters, in the exp_microdosimetry example - (1)/(2)
  • Improvement to the Hadrontherapy example in the simulation of proton, carbon ion and helium ion beam irradiation for the calculation of track and dose averaged LET - (1)/(2)
  • Code review, migration to C++17 and coding guidelines - (1)/(2)
  • New example showing how to import in Geant4 simulations IAEA Phase Space Files - (2)/(*)

Novice & Extended Examples

  • New example illustrating generic biasing for “DXTRAN” MCNP-like option and occurrence interaction of charged particles - (1)/(2)
  • New gflash parameterisation example for sampling calorimeter - (1)/(2)
  • New example of task-based sub-event parallelism - (1)/(2)
  • New examples for probe scorer - (1)/(2)
  • Biasing examples: fix overlap among B02, B03 and GB03 examples - (1)/(2)
  • Modernization of the extended parameterisation examples - (1)/(2)
  • Updates and improvements to G4DNA icsd, dnadamage and clustering examples - (1)/(2)
  • Validation and development with protons and He4 ions in molecularDNA example - (1)/(2)
  • Clang-tidy checks on selected extended examples categories - (1)/(2)
  • Continue application of coding guidelines - (1)/(2)

Deadlines

  • First semester - 28 June 2024
  • Second semester - 6 December 2024