Minutes Technical Forum 21st January 2021

Minutes of 21st January 2021 Meeting of Geant4 Technical Forum

Editor: Marilena Bandieramonte, 21st January 2021

- Starting at 16:00 (three hours format)

Introduction
============

+ see slides for detail

Major highlights:

  • New Technical Forum chair: 
    • Marilena Bandieramonte (ATLAS, Pittsburg Univ.)
    • Andreas Morsch (ALICE, CERN) is then stepping down. We express our deepest appreciation to him for his 10 years of service !
  • The next TF meeting will take place during spring
  • We plan a major release in 2021
  • Today’s TF meeting dedicated to release 10.7

 

What’s new in 10.7 - non-physics part
============================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights:

  • Updated VecGeom library, VecGeom v1.1.8
  • Improved speed for overlaps detection
  • New templated field classes for equation of motion and selected steppers
  • New tasking system (Beta version) as option


What’s new in 10.7 - EM physics part
===========================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights: 

EM developments for Geant4 10.7 was focused on: 

  • Technical improvements of code 
  • CPU performance for HEP applications 
  • New features for medical and low-energy applications 
  • Extension of capabilities for optical photon transport
  • G4EmBuilder: 
    • A new utility class which will allow reduce code duplication for standard and low-energy EM physics constructors
  • G4GammaGeneralProcess: 
    • Is available as an option in any standard Physics List


What’s new in 10.7 - Hadronic physics part
=================================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights:

  • Update to Hadronic data sets
  • For both FTF (Fritiof) & QGS (Quark Gluon String) 
    • Completed the extension to charm and bottom hadron projectiles
  • Simplified treatment of the decays of secondary charm and bottom hadrons (i.e. created by inelastic nuclear interactions of primary hadrons)
  • Stable hadronic showers in G4 10.7: we recommend to fit the Birks quenching coefficient from the h/e test-beam data !
  • geant-val.cern.ch: only validation tool in Geant4, we rely heavily on it


Open requirements
=================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights: New requirements

  • Extend “force collision” biasing to charged particles
  • Include the Goudsmith-Sanderson multiple scattering model in the default EM option 0
  • Improve inelastic cross-section of d-bar and antu_He3 at low energies


TO BE ADDED:

  • Suggestion/Request from ATLAS to add a new Geant4 method (slide 12 of ATLAS report)
    • G4PrimaryParticle::SetProperTimeFromDetectorFrameDecayLength (double GeneratorDecayLength)

 

ATLAS report
=========================================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights:

  • Atlas is testing different Geant4 versions to select the RUN3 best candidate
  • Effects of Birks constant tuning still to be understood
  • Established in Sept 2020 a new Geant4 (G4) Optimisation Task Force (TF), responsible for optimising the performance of the ATLAS G4 simulation software
  • Feedback on intrinsic Geant4.10.6 performance optimisations:
    • Reduced n. of log calls in EM physics: ~5% speedup (fullsimlight simulation with ATLAS geometry and magnetic field)
    • General Gamma Process: ~4.3% speedup measured in Athena with tt-bar events
    • New way of setting the stepper/driver in Geant4.10.6 vs old way in Geant4.10.1.patch03.atlas07 : 11.82%  speedup (comprehensive of ~10% speedup coming from optimisations across many Geant4 versions)
  • Quasi-stable particle simulation was fixed (problem was on the ATLAS side)
    • Suggestion/Request to add a new Geant4 method • G4PrimaryParticle::SetProperTimeFromDetectorFrameDecayLength(double GeneratorDecayLength)
  • Many ongoing optimisation activities

 

CMS report
=========================================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights:

  • Currently CMS uses the version Geant4.10.6.p02 by default
  • Doing ultra-legacy MC production for Run2 data sets using the version Geant4.10.4.p03
  • Considering to use Geant4.10.7 for Run3 MC production. This version is available since December 2020
  • Planning to use the same physics list for ultra legacy as well as for the Run3 production • FTFP_BERT_EMM
  • The validation is carried out using 2 sources of data: 
    • 2006 test beam with CMS calorimeter prototypes (hadron beams of different types and different energies) 
    • Collision data from the CMS experiment utilizing zero bias or minimum bias triggers from low luminosity runs
    • All 3 versions (10.4.p03, 10.6.p02 and 10.7) provide good agreement with the data

 

On modelling multi fragment decays with Geant4
=========================================================================

+ see slides for details

Major highlights:

  • Standalone tests of G4SMM and G4FermiBreakUp (v9.1 – v10.4): comparison with the FORTRAN versions of the respective models
  • G4FermiBreakUp: As a result of debugging and tunes several changes were proposed by us to G4 developers and implemented in v9.2
  • Comparisons of G4FermiBreakUp across v 9.2, 9.6, 10.3 and 10.4 show that from 9.6 on G4FermiBreakUp doesn’t work properly
  • G4SMM works well in v10.4
  • Problems with G4FermiBreakUp are discussed at Geant4 User Forum since July of 2020: https://geant4-forum.web.cern.ch/t/strange-results-of-g4fermibreakup-in -v10-4/3137 
  • Also reported within Geant4 Problem Tracking System: https://bugzilla-geant4.kek.jp/show_bug.cgi?id=2263