Крос-верифікація Монте-Карло кодів Geant4 та MCNP6 для мюонної томографії

Abstract

Muon tomography is a promising detection technology that uses natural radiation, the muons of cosmic rays. In the last decade, a significant number of scientific papers have appeared that investigate the possibility of using muon tomography in various fields of science and technology. Especially remarkable is the considerable potential of this technology for detecting the illegal transport of radioactive materials and for no-invasive testing of the integrity of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage facilities for such fuel. For the implementation of muon tomography technology, the process of preliminary modeling of the experimental detector facility is important, which also requires verification of the obtained calculation results. For this purpose, the well-known Monte Carlo codes MCNP and Geant4 are mainly used. This results of the first cross-verification studies of MCNP6 and Geant4 codes are demonstrated in the paper. The study was performed on simple models for different materials and for different energies of the muons bombarding the research object. The recommended QGSP_BERT physics library was used in the Geant4 code. In the MCNP6 code, the recommended settings for cosmic particle simulations were used. The calculations showed that for low-energy muons, both codes give results that agree well with each other. This can be explained by the fact that similar libraries of evaluated nuclear data are used in the low-energy range. Regarding the muons of intermediate energies, there is a significant difference between the two codes, which may indicate differences in physical models. The modeling of high-energy muon transfer has better agreement between MCNP6 and Geant4 codes than for intermediate-energy muons, but significant differences are still observed for heavy nuclei.