A Geant4 Fano test for novel very high energy electron beams.
Michael McManusFrancesco RomanoGary J RoyleHugo PalmansAnna SubielPublished in: Physics in medicine and biology (2021)
Objective:The boundary crossing algorithm available in Geant4 10.07-p01 general purpose Monte Carlo code has been investigated for a 12 MeV and 200 MeV electron source by the application of a Fano cavity test.Approach:Fano conditions were enforced through all simulations whilst varying individual charged particle transport parameters which control particle step size, ionisation and single scattering.Main Results:At 12 MeV, Geant4 was found to return excellent dose consistency within 0.1% even with the default parameter configurations. The 200 MeV case, however, showed significant consistency issues when default physics parameters were employed with deviations from unity of more than 6%. The effect of the inclusion of nuclear interactions was also investigated for the 200 MeV beam and was found to return good consistency for a number of parameter configurations.Significance:The Fano test is a necessary investigation to ensure the consistency of charged particle transport available in Geant4 before detailed detector simulations can be conducted.