- Release notes for Fluka2006.3b (patch version of Fluka2006.3) -
This release contains several small fixes and a few functionality improvements
with respect to Fluka2006.3. Most of them are likely to be irrelevant for
the majority of the users, however it is safer and recommended to
immediately move to Fluka2006.3b. The move should be painless since there
is no change in the physics. Only be careful to recompile user routines
since a couple of commons changed.
This release is a bug fixing release for Fluka2006.3. As such it doesn't
count as a new release, and it doesn't obsolete Fluka2005.6, for the
purpose of the provisions of the Fluka User license. Rather, it obsoletes
Fluka2006.3 and hence all users of Fluka2006.3 are invited to move
to this bug fixing release from now on, particularly for publications.
The most relevant bug fixes or functionality improvements are listed below:
* LATTICE cards now accept a mixture of (region) names and (lattice)
numbers in order to simplify lattice input (see
http://www.fluka.org/web_archive/earchive/new-fluka-discuss/0757.html )
* The memory allocations for the (maximum) numbers of irradiation intervals
and cooling times are now handled together, so that there is much
more flexibility when inputting a large number of irradiation intervals
(and relatively few cooling times) and viceversa. Small adjustments in
the usrsuwev program have been implemented because of this
* Creating a fluka.stop file inside the fluka_xxxx working directory
is going to stop the current run as it did in all previous release.
Starting from this release, if the file is instead named rfluka.stop,
not only the current run is stopped, but also the run sequence is
stopped even though the total requested number of runs has not yet
been achieved
* When scoring some types of "pointwise" energy depositions,
the JTRACK variable (common TRACKR) is set to a generalized particle
value:
JTRACK = 208 for non-transported nuclear recoils
JTRACK = 308 for low energy neutron kerma
JTRACK = 211 for EM particles produced below threshold
Values 208 and 211 were already set in past versions, while the 308 flag
is new. A new variable has been added in the TRACKR common to help identify
these energy depositions:
J0TRCK
it records the ID of the particle that originated the interaction.
Warning: this variable is normally set to 0, its value has a
meaning only when JTRACK = 208, 211, 308.
* A file, Version.tag, is included in the distribution in order to
simplify (semi)automatic procedures for identifying versions and
respins
* The heavy ion dE/dx at low energies (below 10-30 MeV/n for projectiles
of medium-large Z's) had a bug which slipped into the Fluka2005.6 release
and went unnoticed till now (thanks to Ercan Pilicer for pointing it
out), effectively disabling the effective Z algorithm.
All users who run heavy ion beams at low energies are warned to
moved immediately to Fluka2006.3b: results are now back to those of
Fluka200x, x=0,1,2,3,4 and in agreement with published benchmarks
* A couple of bugs were still lurking in the Birks law quenching
implementation when requested through the Mgdraw routine (thanks to
Vincenzo Patera for pointing out the problem). These bugs should have
affected only problems with magnetic field, however users who were
making use of this novel feature of Fluka2006.3 should better check
if their results are still the same. All users whose runs will stop
with the message
"FKBIRK, NONSENSE xxxxx CALL"
are warmly invited to contact us through fluka-discuss since the
messages could imply that problems are still around in the
Mgdraw-driven quenching implementation
* The prompt vs delayed radiation biasing selection through WHAT(4) of
the RADDECAY card was badly broken (thanks to Stefan Roesler for pointing
out this problem): now it is fixed and should behave as advertised
in the manual (feedback welcome)
Many other minor bug fixes have been implemented, but they should be
completely transparent to end users
A few further news of relevance for Fluka users are reported below:
* From this release on the support@fluka.org and physics@fluka.org mailing
addresses no longer exist. The messages sent to those addresses were
almost all about topics better discussed on fluka-discuss@fluka.org.
Whichever problem with the web site and/or the registration and download
procedures should be reported to the same list as well with possibly
[SUPPORT] at the beginning of the subject line
* A new list, fluka-users@fluka.org, has been created. All registered
Fluka users have been automatically subscribed to this list and new users
will be as well. This is a low traffic, one way only list, dedicated
to announcements (like a new release, a bug fixing respin, etc etc)
which are deemed to be relevant for all users. We strongly invite all
active Fluka users to not quit this list. Those no longer active, or
anyway whoever so wishes, can unsubscribe sending a message to
Majordomo@fisica.unimi.it with "unsubscribe fluka-users" in the main body.
As usual, all active users are strongly encouraged to subscribe to
fluka-discuss@fisica.unimi.it
* A new very powerful tool for interacting with Fluka both at input
and output stages is now available, thanks to Vasilis Vlachoudis (CERN)
This tool, called Flair (FLuka Advanced Interface), can be downloaded
at
http://www.fluka.org/flair/index.html
This tool should run on whichever modern Linux distribution: users are
strongly encouraged to test it and provide their feedback through the
fluka-discuss list. All other tools, like FlukaGUI and TVF NMCRC, are
obviously still available via http://www.fluka.org/Tools.html
The FLUKA development team
The release notes for Fluka2006.3 and before are reported below.
They still apply unless explicitly superseded above. We invite the users
to give particular attention to the PEANUT extension described below.
- Release notes for Fluka2006.3 (release version) -
This release is an incremental step in the FLUKA development with
respect to Fluka2005.6. It adds a few features and there are physics
improvements in several areas. It represents a major milestone from
the user interface point of view with the introduction of the
"input by names".
The users should keep in mind that there are a significant number of new
features in this release, and therefore some problems are expected. The
development team has spent a significant amount of time debugging the new
features, however we would be surprised if no issue will show up.
Users are recommended to check the Fluka home page for possible advisories
on patched versions.
As it is obvious from the name, the major revision number of this release
is 2006 and the minor revision number is 3. With this release all FLUKA
version older or equal to 2003.1b are obsoleted and they should no longer
be used according to the conditions spelled out in the FLUKA license.
- NEW PHYSICS AND TECHNICAL FEATURES -
Among the new features of this release (with respect to Fluka2005.6):
- New "Input by name"(fully backcompatible with the past): particle,
materials, regions, generalized particles, binnings, and estimators can
now be indicated in the input file through their names rather than their
numbers. This new feature is compatible with the old input way: a mix of
name based and numeric values can be used in the input files. The
included example input file (example.inp) is now written "by name": the
traditional version (exfixed.inp) and a mixed one (exmixed.inp) are also
provided. See the manual for further details.
- New fission model/improvements to evaporation/fragmentation
* Actinide fission now done on first principles and no longer on
parametrized G_fiss/G_neu
* New fission barrier calculations following the most recent suggestions
by Myers & Swiatecki
* Fission level density enhancement at saddle point no longer
excitation energy independent but now washing out with excitation
energy coherently with the most recent studies and the recommendations
of a IAEA working group
* Fission product widths and asymmetric vs symmetric probabilities
better parametrized according to the most recent data/approaches
* New, energy dependent self-consistent, evaporation level densities
according to the IAEA working group recommendations
* New pairing energies consistent with the above point
* New mass tables including calculated masses besides exp. ones till
A=330. The use of masses calculated offline (available electronically)
with high reliability complex models allows, a) to extend to A larger
than those experimentally accessible, b) to minimize resorting to
empirical mass formulae online which often generate artefacts
* New shell corrections coherent with the new masses
The overall result in the residual predictions in the spallation zone
is a striking improvement for actinides (which was poor before), a nice
improvement for non-actinides (Pb, Au etc, it was already not bad),
and a global improvement in the mass distribution of fission fragments
for all of them. For non fissionable light-medium mass nuclei differences
are minor, nevertheless the new level densities appear to smooth out
some features and in particular some excessive odd-even effect
- An initial implementation of the BME model, available on request,
has been performed. It covers light ion interactions up to 100 MeV/n.
First results, when applied to positron emitter production with therapy
beams are encouraging
- Speed up of radioactive nuclei evolution
- Lattices: the required transformations can now be specified associating
each lattice with a specific roto-translation defined through
ROT-DEFI. This is a viable alternative to a user written lattic.f when
a limited number of transformations has to be defined. Both methods are
and will be fully supported, in principle the user can mix and use
predefined transformations for some lattices, and lattic.f for others.
See the manual (LATTICE card) for details
- An algorithm for parentheses optimization is now implemented in the
geometry package (contributed by V.Vlachoudis, see GEOBEGIN)
- Activity concentration 2D/3D binnings are now implemented through the
new generalized particle types ACTIVITY (234, activity per unit volume)
and ACTOMASS (235, activity per unit mass)
- Residual nuclei scoring and gas production: protons are now included
in the RESNUCLEi scoring, in order to prevent lazy users from
obtaining nonsense results on gas production (see below)
- Beta+/- spectra now include Coulomb and screening corrections
- Photomuon production is now implemented limited to coherent
(Bethe-Heitler) production for the time being (contributed by
S.Roesler/A.Fasso`). It can be activated by the PHOTONUC card
- Explicit primary ionization events can be requested on a material
basis. The user must provide the number of primary ionizations
per cm (and for some variants of the model a guess for the 1st ionization
potential) and choose one of the four available variants. Primary
ionization electron energies will then be stored inside common
ALLDLT at each step in the selected materials. It can be activated
by the IONFLUCT card. Use with care and possibly for gases only.
The number of primary ionizations can quickly escalate, particularly
when multiply charged ions are involved. No common saturation should
occur since the code is piling up all the remaining primary electrons
into the last common location if required, however CPU penalties can
be severe if used without wisdom
- Extension of PEANUT: last but not least, a new high energy event
generator has been developed, based on the sophisticated nuclear
physics of PEANUT coupled with the proved FLUKA Dual Parton Model
description for hadron-hadron collisions and a brand new Glauber
cascade treatment. This model will eventually substitute as default
the old one (PEANUT is already the default below 5 GeV). It is not
yet the default, mostly because it requires a bit more testing
and cleaning up some FLUKA inconsistencies related to quasi-elastic
treatment. All thin target benchmarks of the code by the development
team are now run with the new model, the development of the old one
being frozen. The PHYSICS cards allows to switch on the new model
(with some caveats about the quasielastic issue) ie with:
PHYSICS 1000. 1000. 1000. 1000. 1000. 1000. PEATHRES
-- IMPORTANT WARNINGS FOR THE USERS --
- Whenever residual nuclei (and residual dose rates) scoring is of
importance, the heavy residue emission ("fragmentation") and the
coalescence emission of fast complex particles should be switched on,
through the following data cards:
PHYSICS 3.0 EVAPORAT
PHYSICS 1.0 COALESCE
and (as a consequence of coalescence) it would be wise to link with
rQMD-2.4 (and DPMJET) and activate ion transport and interactions. These
suggestions are mandatory for residual nuclei benchmarking and validation.
Those options are not on by default because the heavy evaporation carries a
big CPU penalty which would be a waste for most problems when residuals are
not a issue.
- All previous versions never included scoring of A=1 residuals (supposed to
be "elementary" hadrons and not composite nuclei) when the
RESNUCLEi card was activated: this was clearly indicated and it was
obvious from the output of the usrsuw and usrsuwev auxiliary programs.
Nevertheless some users missed completely this feature, and went on
publishing results about gas production (hydrogen production) which were
obviously nonsensically low, without realizing they were scoring only
H-2 and H-3 production and not H-1.
-- OBSOLETE FEATURES --
- the COMMENT card is deprecated (ordinary comments starting with "*" are
of course supported): it is still accepted but there is no guarantee
it works properly
-- NEW FEATURES NOT YET INCLUDED --
The following features are currently under active development. Some
of them are ready but were not included for lack of time, others are ready
and possibly already presented or going to be presented to conferences,
but not yet tested enough for a general user version, others are in
various stages of completeness. The Authors warn that every result obtained
out of the production version of the code which could be heavily
dependent on any of these features will not be representative of the actual
performances of FLUKA and therefore shall not be published.
List of the features under active development but not yet included in the
production version of FLUKA:
a) New 260 group neutron cross section library
b) Heavy fragment emission in the preequilibrium stage
c) Impact ionization cross sections
d) Compton with Doppler shift
e) Heavy ion pair production
f) Direct resonance transport and interaction in PEANUT
g) Updated multiple scattering model (including the so called
polygonal approach)
h) New hadron elastic scattering model at intermediate energies
i) Neutral kaon regeneration (partially implemented, but still faulty
because not yet performed at scattering amplitude level)
j) New QMD model developed in house covering the range 50-400 MeV/n
-- PLATFORMS UNDER WHICH FLUKA SHALL BE RUN --
This version of the code should be run on the platforms for which it
has been released, that is Linux x86 and Compaq TrueUnix. The code has
been checked and validated for these platforms only for the time being.
The availability of the source code shall not be exploited for tentative
builds on other architectures or with different compilers/compiler options
than the ones recommended by the development team. Our experience shows that
for a code of the complexity of FLUKA the chances of hitting one or more
compiler issues are close to unit. Therefore users shall not make use
for every serious job, including whichever form of publication or
presentation, of code versions built on platforms and/or with compiler
options which have not been cleared as safe by the development team.
The development team is actively developing and testing FLUKA also on
other platforms which will become available in the close future.
-- FLUKA MANAGEMENT AND LICENSING CONDITIONS --
This is the second release of FLUKA carried out under the INFN-CERN
Collaboration Agreement for the Maintenance and Development of the FLUKA
code.
The development and distribution of FLUKA is managed by two Committees,
the former, the Fluka Coordination Committee (FCC), which is representing
the Copyright Holders (INFN and CERN) and which is empowered for all
major decisions, the latter, the Fluka Scientific Committee (FSC), which
is in charge of the day-to-day development of the code and of the
technical and scientific issues.
The present membership of the Fluka Coordination Committee and the
Fluka Scientific Committee are the following:
FCC:
Giuseppe Battistoni INFN/Milan Giuseppe.Battistoni@mi.infn.it (chairman)
John Ferguson CERN/AB John.Ferguson@cern.ch
John Harvey CERN/PH John.Harvey@cern.ch
Johannes Ranft Siegen Un. Johannes.Ranft@cern.ch
Paola R. Sala INFN/Milan Paola.Sala@mi.infn.it
FSC:
Giuseppe Battistoni INFN/Milan Giuseppe.Battistoni@mi.infn.it
Federico Carminati CERN/PH Federico.Carminati@cern.ch
Alberto Fasso` SLAC Fasso@slac.stanford.edu
Alfredo Ferrari CERN/AB Alfredo.Ferrari@cern.ch (secretary)
Maurizio Pelliccioni INFN/LNF Maurizio.Pelliccioni@lnf.infn.it
Johannes Ranft Siegen Un. Johannes.Ranft@cern.ch
Stefan Roesler CERN/RP Stefan.Roesler@cern.ch
Paola R. Sala INFN/Milan Paola.Sala@mi.infn.it
Vasilis Vlachoudis CERN/AB Vasilis.Vlachoudis@cern.ch
The cornerstones of the INFN-CERN Agreement are the following:
a) the code is Copyright 1989-2006 INFN and CERN, and the authors
are Alberto Fasso`, Alfredo Ferrari, Johannes Ranft and Paola Sala:
the Copyright and licensing conditions extend to all the work
performed by the Authors since 1989, and therefore covers the
vast majority of the code contained in all FLUKA releases or
development versions since that date
b) make the code available to the scientific community under a License
which gives broad rights to the end user
c) protect the code integrity and authorship inserting in the License
proper conditions
d) assure that only official versions of the code will be used,
prosecuting in case, including by legal means, the use of unauthorized,
or worse, pirated versions
This release is available in source form for CERN staff members and INFN
researchers: special download forms are available on the Fluka web site
for this purpose. The source is now also available for other scientific
Institutions, pending the technical time required to setup the download
forms and procedures. The source release includes the Linux-x86 version
only (which runs on x86_64 machines as well). The Fluka Coordination
Committee, the Fluka Scientific Committee and the Authors kindly invite
all users to refer to any of them for whichever question or doubt about
the source release and its condition of use.
Code snippets setting an expiration day for this release
version are present in a few routines: obviously the availability
of the source code allows to change it, however users should be aware
that under the licensing conditions this is not permitted. The code
expiration date (around january 2008 for this release) is there as a
reminder to use up-to-date versions. In no way it is intended as a
robust protection, the code distribution is done as always on a mutual
trust basis.
The "FLUKA User Routines" mentioned at point 3) in the FLUKA User License
are obviously those (and only those) contained in the directory usermvax,
both in the source and binary versions of the code.
Copyright statements referring to one of more of the Authors (A.Fasso`,
A.Ferrari, J.Ranft, P.R. Sala) contained in individual routines, must
always be interpreted as:
Copyright INFN and CERN, Authors: ...
since the Authors have transferred their rights to INFN and CERN at the
time of (and subject to) the enactement of the INFN-CERN agreement of
2003.
A proper re-elaboration of all those Copyright statements is going on.
-- MISCELLANEOUS --
The source code for DPMJET and for the version of rQMD-2.4 used together
with FLUKA is not yet available for this release. The development
team is finalizing the proper distribution conditions for these codes,
which will be possibly included in the next release. The binary
libraries are anyway available as usual, hence we do not expect any serious
inconvenience for users who need heavy ion capabilities
There are several routines in this release which are apparently
useless and not required for a successful link of the code. Most of them
are new developments which either are activated in the development
version only for the time being, or are under test in isolation with
suitable drivers which are not included in the released version.
Please ignore them.
-- UNSUPPORTED/OBSOLETE VERSIONS --
All FLUKA versions older than Fluka2005.6 (Fluka2003.1b included), and
starting since 1989, are declared obsolete and will no longer be
supported.
Therefore they shall no longer be used for any publication according to
the FLUKA User License and associated Requests of the Authors.
-- REFERENCES TO BE QUOTED --
The use of the FLUKA code must be acknowledged explicitly by quoting
at least the following set of references
- A. Fasso`, A. Ferrari, J. Ranft, and P.R. Sala,
"FLUKA: a multi-particle transport code",
CERN 2005-10 (2005), INFN/TC_05/11, SLAC-R-773
- A. Fasso`, A. Ferrari, S. Roesler, P.R. Sala,
G. Battistoni, F. Cerutti, E. Gadioli, M.V. Garzelli,
F. Ballarini, A. Ottolenghi, A. Empl and J. Ranft,
"The physics models of FLUKA: status and recent developments",
Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics 2003 Conference
(CHEP2003), La Jolla, CA, USA, March 24-28, 2003, (paper MOMT005)
eConf C0303241 (2003), arXiv:hep-ph/0306267
Additional FLUKA references can be added, provided they are relevant for
this FLUKA version.
If FLUKA is used together with rQMD-2.4, DPMJET-2.53, or DPMJET-3 the
following references should be quoted:
rQMD-2.4:
- H. Sorge, H. Stoecker, and W. Greiner, Annals of Physics 192, 266 (1989)
DPMJET-2.53:
- J. Ranft. Physical Review D51, 64 (1995)
DPMJET-3:
- S.Roesler, R.Engel, J.Ranft: "The Monte Carlo Event Generator DPMJET-III"
in Proceedings of the Monte Carlo 2000 Conference, Lisbon, October 23-26
2000, A. Kling, F. Barao, M. Nakagawa, L. Tavora, P. Vaz eds.,
Springer-Verlag Berlin, 1033-1038 (2001).
The FLUKA development team
=== Part of the Release Notes for Fluka2005.6 are reported here ===
=== for convenience ===
=== All provisions not explicitly overriden in the above text ===
=== are still valid ===
This release is a quantum leap forward in the FLUKA development with
respect to the last release, Fluka2003.1b, both from the technical and
scientific point of view, and for the interaction with the users.
omissis
- NEW PHYSICS AND TECHNICAL FEATURES -
A good fraction of the new features of FLUKA as presented in recent
conferences are in, some of them are still out just because they are still
felt as experimental.
The most relevant new features are the following:
a) Radioactive products online evolution and associated remnant doses
b) PEANUT extension to pbar/nbar and, for p,n, pi's, pbar/nbar
elimination of Nucriv. Among the many consequences of this development,
the threshold for nbar transport and interactions can now be set as low
as the user wishes (!!! Please do no longer use 50 MeV, and please,
note that the threshold for Kshort/long transport can be as low as
the user wish since 2000 !!!)
c) ElectroMagnetic dissociation of heavy ions
d) Elimination of PEMF
e) New photon cross sections obtained out of EPDL97 (LLNL)
f) New photon coherent scattering model
g) Updated photon photoelectric effect model
h) Updated photon pair production model
i) Elimination of the OUTLEVEL and ACCURACY input options
l) Obsoleting the EXTRAWEI option (see USERWEIG)
m) Parentheses in geometry (eventually!)
n) Introduction of (simple) preprocessor directives in the input stream
o) New random number generator
p) New routines for mathematical special functions (adapted from SLATEC)
q) Interface with DPMJET-3 (the one with DPMJET-2.53 is still
available)
omissis
-- IMPORTANT WARNINGS FOR THE USERS --
A major cleanup of FLUKA commons and routines has been performed, trying to
make the code structure more rational and symmetric (among the various
parts) in its implementation. A significant amount of obsolete code has been
removed.
Problems with variable or commons which no longer exists or have
changed their names could occur within preexisting user routines.
In particular:
a) as a consequence of the elimination of PEMF, all material properties
which were given in the PEMF input file are now taken from the FLUKA
input file. The user MUST provide only the production thresholds
for photons and electrons/positrons (the AE and AP parameters of
the PEMF input file) using the EMFCUT card with sdum = PROD-CUT.
Forgetting to introduce this card into your old inputs could
cause wrong results. The code will indeed select defaults for
the production cuts which could be easily far different from the
ones previously used in the corresponding PEMF file.
Please look at the manual for details about how to input the
EM production threshold with EMFCUT. The "-p" option in the rfluka
script has been kept for future extensions, where an automatically
generated data file will be produced in order to speedup the
initialization of further runs with the same input. Please don't
use it.
b) the common BEAM has been renamed BEAMCM and the following variable
name changes occurred:
XINA -> XBEAM TINX -> UBEAM TINPX -> UBMPOL
YINA -> YBEAM TINY -> VBEAM TINPY -> VBMPOL
ZINA -> ZBEAM TINZ -> WBEAM TINPZ -> WBMPOL
c) the Fluka and Emf stacks have been completely reshuffled. For most
user routines, it should be enough to include (FLKSTK) where
(STACK) was included and perform the following modifications:
LSTACK -> NPFLKA WT -> WTFLK PMOM -> PMOFLK NREG -> NRGFLK
XA -> XFLK TX -> TXFLK TKE -> TKEFLK
YA -> YFLK TY -> TYFLK ILO -> ILOFLK
ZA -> ZFLK TZ -> TZFLK LO -> LOFLK
Please be careful that there are new variables which are critical
and which need to be set for the proper operation of the code, ie
when a user source routine is used
d) the lattic user routine, which is needed for the exploitation of the
repetition capabilities of the FLUKA geometry, has now one further
argument in the calling sequence. User should adapt their lattic
versions, looking at the example supplied inside usermvax
e) for those entitled to download the source version: the source
distribution contains a Makefile which allows building the code
on Linux-x86 (x86_64, with the -m32 option as required by the binary
files). In order to run the code successfully one has to download
the binary version as well (which contains the data files, the
auxiliary tools etc, which are not duplicated in the source tar file
distribution)
omissis