Recent enhancements to the MARS15 code

The MARS code is under continuous development and has recently undergone substantial improvements that further increase its reliability and predictive power in numerous shielding, accelerator, detector and space applications. The major developments and new features of the MARS15 (2004) version described in this paper concern an extended list of elementary particles and arbitrary heavy ions and their interaction cross sections, inclusive and exclusive nuclear event generators, module for modelling particle electromagnetic interactions, enhanced geometry and histogramming options, improved MAD-MARS Beam Line Builder, enhanced graphical user interface and an MPI-based parallelisation of the code.

Parallelising the MARS15 code with MPI for shielding applications

The MARS15 Monte Carlo code capabilities to deal with time-consuming deep penetration shielding problems and other computationally tough tasks in accelerator, detector and shielding applications, have been enhanced by a parallel processing option. It has been developed, implemented and tested on the Fermilab Accelerator Division Linux cluster and network of Sun workstations. The code uses a message passing interface MPI. It is scalable and demonstrates good performance. The general architecture of the code, specific uses of message passing and effects of a scheduling on the performance and fault tolerance are described.

Towards a heavy-ion transport capability in the MARS15 code

In order to meet the challenges of new accelerator and space projects and further improve modelling of radiation effects in microscopic objects, heavy-ion interaction and transport physics have been recently incorporated into the MARS15 Monte Carlo code. A brief description of new modules is given in comparison with experimental data.

Modelling radiation loads to detectors in a SNAP mission

In order to investigate the degradation of optical detectors of the Supernova Acceleration Project (SNAP) space mission because of irradiation, a three-dimensional model of the satellite has been developed. A realistic radiation environment at the satellite orbit, including both galactic cosmic rays and cosmic ray trapped in radiation belts, has been taken into account. The modelling has been performed with the MARS14 Monte Carlo code. In a current design, the main contribution to dose accumulated in the photo-detectors is shown to be due to trapped protons. The contribution of primary alpha particles is estimated. Predicted performance degradation for the photodetector for a four-year space mission is 40% and this can be reduced further by means of shielding optimisation.

Magnetic field tracking with MCNP5

With the introduction of continuous-energy heavy charged particle transport in MCNP5, the need for tracking charged particles in a magnetic field becomes increasingly important. Two methods for including magnetic field effects on charged particles are included in the proton transport version of the code. The first technique utilises transfer maps produced by the beam dynamics simulation and analysis code COSY INFINITY. This method is fast and accurate; however, its use is limited to void cells only and to ensembles of particles with a fairly small energy spread. The second technique, particle ray tracing, is based on an algorithm adopted from the MARS transport code. This method can be applied to both void and material cells and is valid over a very large range of particle energies. Results from tracking particles in a quadrupole 'identity lens' using the two techniques are compared.