Achievements of the LowE e'm' WG

1
Achievements of the LowE e.m. WG

• Petteri Nieminen Maria Grazia Pia

Geant4 Workshop Paris, 16-20 October
2000 http//www.ge.infn.it/lowE/
2
Birth and growthof the Low Energy e.m. Physics WG

• We applied for the creation of a new LowE e.m. WG
  in March 2000
• WG created by the CB in April 2000
• 9 members at the time of the creation
• 3 of the initial members lost
• including holder of full time contract
• 33 members now
• 3 new applications to be examined this week by
  CB/TSB
• 3 new affiliations of existing collaborators
• Contacts in progress with 3 new groups interested
  to join

3
How we work
Goal-directed project management Spiral cyclic
software process
Characterized by
Physics Applications
Wide spectrum of development

• Promotion of cross-WG activities
• Close relationship with user communities
• Regular Working Group meetings
• Emphasis on training of all group members
• Active strategy of talks and publications
• for promotion of Geant4 and our own products
• as an incentive and reward for the group members

4
Milestones

• LowE e.m. Milestone Document, TSB April 2000
• Assessment of the physics implementation
• Physics updates and extensions
• Software quality and software process improvement
• Testing
• Design improvement
• Documentation and promotion

5
Assessment

• Thorough assessment of the existing software
• design
• implementations
• physics performance
• testing tools

• Comparisons with experimental data
• Comparisons with Standard e.m. processes in
  common validity range for debugging purpose
• bugs and problems found and corrected
• both in LowE and Standard...

• Application to microdosimetry and nanodosimetry

Close collaboration with user groups in the
assessment
6
New physics

• New model for positive charged hadrons (Ziegler
  1985)
• Improvements on straggling (hadrons and ions)
• Introduction of a dynamic dependence on effective
  charge into the range calculation
• Improvements in the validity range of d ray
  production
• New models for ion energy loss fluctuations
• New model for negative charged hadrons
• first model was limited to a set of materials
• then extended to all elements, based on
  theoretical calculations
• OO Analysis started for positrons

7
Results, photons
Pb
water
Fe
8
Results, protons and ions
9
Plans for extensions

• Foreseen extensions include
• polarisation in g conversion
• polarisation in Compton effect
• Doppler broadening
• Auger electrons
• models to handle material dependent effects at
  very low energies
• reengineering of Penelope models into Geant4
• components of interest for space/astrophysics
  applications
• components of interest for medical applications

10
Software Process Improvement

• A sample of the improvements
• establishment and management of User Requirements
  Document
• establishment and documentation of procedures
• design before coding
• designs and testing under configuration
  management
• identification of tasks and responsibilities
• tracking
• ...too long to list all the improvements

• Huge effort invested into SPI
• started from level 0
• chaotic, left to heroic improvisation
• On-going process
• the results of the assessment are probably
  already quite obsolete for the LowE e.m. WG...

11
Internal training

• Substantial investment in the internal training
  in the WG
• guided readings
• code reviews
• mentoring
• introduction to basic concepts in software
  process and OO methodologies
• Visible effects on the quality of the software
  and of the process
• Great interest among the developers
• who demand more of it
• Perhaps a suggestion for a collaboration-wide
  programme?

12
Testing
from...
to...

• Two system tests
• No unit tests
• No testing procedures
• Physics tests in personal accounts only
• No distinction between tests and examples

• Suite of unit tests
• Suite of physics tests
• Two system tests
• Tests and examples are separated
• Testing procedures
• Testing integrated with development

13
Design

• Initial situation
• no architectural nor detailed design
• no design process
• Massive improvement of the design and design
  process needed
• spiral cyclic process
• design iteration in the hadron/ion domain
• design documentation
• Reverse engineering of existing classes
• Further design iterations already planned
• Education to design and design process in the WG

14
Top level class diagram
RD44 Geant4alpha
15
Top level class diagram
to...
obtained from reverse engineering...
16
Design electrons
17
Design electrons
to...
18
Design photons
19
Design photons
to...
20
Designhadrons, ions
(reverse engineering...)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Documentation

• User Documentation
• Included LowE documentation in Application
  Developer Guide
• Expanded LowE documentation in Physics Reference
  Manual
• Identified wrong documentation in Toolkit
  Developer Guide

• Internal documentation
• procedures
• design
• tests

Web page http//www.ge.infn.it/lowE/
23
Conferences 2000-2001

• CHEP 2000 (2) Padova, February
• ESA-CERN workshop CERN, April
• PTCOG Uppsala, April
• ICCR Heidelberg, May
• Workshop on Space Radiation Research Arona, May
• ESTRO Istanbul, September
• Calor 2000 Annecy, October
• MC 2000 (3) ? 3 INFN preprints Lisbon, October
• AIRO Pisa, October
• ESTEC TOS-EMA Final Presentation Days ESTEC,
  December
• Seminars (DESY, Frascati, Genova, Rome,
  Stockholm, Udine)

24
Publications
The following publications on refereed journals
are planned in the short term

• General LowE paper
• Electrons and photons
• Positive hadrons
• Ions
• Antiprotons
• Microdosimetry

• Space telescope general facility
• Brachytherapy general facility
• Brachytherapy comparison project
• Design of the LowE package

Drafts already available for some of them
25
Other activities

• Three advanced examples developed by the LowE WG
• X-ray telescope
• g-ray telescope
• brachytherapy
• to be released in December
• Collaboration with AIDA analysis tools group
• Collaboration with other WGs UI/GUI,
  Visualisation
• The examples/advanced directory has been empty
  since the time of the Niigata Workshop (July
  1998)...

26
The user community

• The WG promotes close contacts with its users
• Large user community, in expansion
• excellent relationships with our users
• users often contact us directly
• the promotion through conferences, seminars, and
  web pages plays a fundamental role in the
  contacts with user communities
• URD created, maintained and regularly updated
• Fruitful collaboration with users on testing

Excerpts of communications with users on Problem
Reports
I really appreciate your support and I know you
are doing your best. If you need any additional
information, do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank you very much for pointing out the
pertinent parameters. I truly appreciate the time
and effort you put into answering my questions.
27
Conclusions

• We fulfilled all our milestones.
• On time.

We hope to have demonstrated to the
Collaboration that the creation of the LowE e.m.
WG has been fruitful to Geant4