Validation of Geant4’s G4NRF module against nuclear resonance fluorescence data from 238U and 27Al

Abstract

G4NRF (Jordan and Warren, 2007; Vavrek et al., 2018a) is a simulation module for modeling nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) interactions in the Geant4 framework (Allison et al., 2016). In this work, we validate G4NRF against both absolute and relative measurements of three NRF interactions near 2.2 MeV in 238U and 27Al using the transmission NRF data from the experiments described in Vavrek et al. (2018b). Agreement between the absolute NRF count rates observed in the data and predicted by extensive Geant4+G4NRF modeling validate the combined Geant4+G4NRF to approximately 15–20% in the 238U NRF transitions and 10% in 27Al, for an average 14% discrepancy across the entire study. The difference between simulation and experiment in relative NRF rates, as expressed as ratios of count rates in various NRF lines, is found at the level of ≲3%, and is statistically identical to zero. Inverting the analysis, approximate values of the absolute level widths and branching ratios for 238U and 27Al are also obtained.