Release notes for FLUKA packages. -------------------------------------------------------- UPDATED===26.09.2008 TITLE===FLUKA files short doc --------------------------------------------------------

Release notes for Fluka2008.3

This release is a major step in the FLUKA development cycle with respect to Fluka2006.3(b): it adds a few new features and there are a few major physics improvements.

The users should keep in mind that given the extent of the new additions some problems could occur. 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.

As it is obvious from the name, the major revision number of this release is 2008 and the minor revision number is 3. With this release all FLUKA version older or equal to 2006.3 are obsoleted and they shall no longer be used according to the conditions spelled out in the FLUKA license.

Starting from this release, the code will be distributed in parallel to the FLUKA web site by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA-OECD) Data Bank. The NEA-OECD distribution (source included) will operate under the same license and conditions, and following the procedures specific of NEA-OECD.

A completely revised version of the FLUKA web site will be available starting September 26th. Users already registered should be flawlessly migrated to the new system. Please, let us know through the fluka-discuss list whichever problem you may meet.

NEW PHYSICS AND TECHNICAL FEATURES

Among the new features of this release (with respect to Fluka2006.3b):

Already starting from Fluka2006.3, 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

Please give particular attention to the PHYSICS card recommendations (see below). For all other features, please refers to the Fluka2006.3(b) release note snippets reported at the end of these release notes.

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. - There is a known issue with photofission: the photonuclear interaction model is not up-to-date with respect to the present fission model. As a result, photofission can be heavily underestimated at low photon energies for fissile materials. A fix is in progress and it will be included in a future patch release -- 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) Heavy fragment emission in the preequilibrium stage b) Impact ionization cross sections c) Compton with Doppler shift d) Calculation and scoring of displacement damage (DPA's) e) Nucleus-Nucleus nuclear elastic scattering 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) -- 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 under g77 (which runs on both 32 and 64 bit machines), Mac OSX under g95, and Compaq TrueUnix. The code has been checked and validated for these platforms/compilers 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 very large. 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 next future. -- FLUKA MANAGEMENT AND LICENSING CONDITIONS -- This is the third major 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) Michael Doser CERN/PH Michael.Doser@cern.ch Roberto Losito CERN/AB Roberto.Losito@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 Francesco Cerutti CERN/AB Francesco.Cerutti@cern.ch Alberto Fasso` SLAC Fasso@slac.stanford.edu Alfredo Ferrari CERN/AB Alfredo.Ferrari@cern.ch (coordinator) Maurizio Pelliccioni INFN/Frascati Maurizio.Pelliccioni@lnf.infn.it Larry Pinsky Un. of Houston pinsky@uh.edu 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 1989-2008 INFN and CERN, and the main 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 the use of unauthorized, or worse, pirated versions This release is as usual available in source form for CERN staff members and INFN researchers: the source is now also available for other scientific Institutions. A special download form is available on the Fluka web site for this purpose. 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 end of 2010 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. -- REFERENCES TO BE QUOTED -- The use of the FLUKA code must be acknowledged explicitly by quoting at least the following set of references - A. Ferrari, P.R. Sala, A. Fasso`, and J. Ranft, "FLUKA: a multi-particle transport code", CERN 2005-10 (2005), INFN/TC_05/11, SLAC-R-773 - G. Battistoni, S. Muraro, P.R. Sala, F. Cerutti, A. Ferrari, S. Roesler, A. Fasso`, J. Ranft, "The FLUKA code: Description and benchmarking", Proceedings of the Hadronic Shower Simulation Workshop 2006, Fermilab 6--8 September 2006, M. Albrow, R. Raja eds., AIP Conference Proceeding 896, 31-49, (2007) 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 also 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). -- UNSUPPORTED/OBSOLETE VERSIONS -- All FLUKA versions older than Fluka2006.3b (Fluka2005.6 and Fluka2006.3 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. The FLUKA development team === Part of the Release Notes for Fluka2006.3(b), reported here === === for convenience === 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 accepts 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@fluka.org "unsubscribe fluka-users" in the main body. As usual, all active users are strongly encouraged to subscribe to fluka-discuss@fluka.org * 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 .... - 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 -- 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

omissis