First steps with Geant4

15 Apr 2024, 13:00 → 19 Apr 2024, 18:30 Europe/Zurich

593/R-010 - Salle 11 (CERN)

This course on Geant4 is for those interested to begin to use the Geant4 toolkit to create or improve applications for High Energy or Nuclear Physics detectors and other domains including medical imaging, particle therapy and the effects of radiation on electronics. It will be a hands-on tutorial based on Geant4 version 11.2.

Lectures will cover the key aspects of Geant4 from the basic building blocks for all applications through intermediate topics. Practical sessions will guide each participant to build an example Geant4 application that is progressively extended to demonstrate a realistic use case.

The course is intended for novices and those with limited familiarity with Geant4. Participants are expected to have a basic knowledge of C++.

We encourage participation in person for CERN, local and those who are able to travel - up to the usable capacity of the auditorium (20). Additional information will be required to enable access to the CERN site for those who do not have a CERN affiliation or access card.

Participation via videoconference will also be possible, for a limited number to enable good followup for the exercises. 

Registration

The course is FULL.

Preinstallation of Geant4 is Required

Users must setup a desktop or laptop capable of running Geant4, equipped with an internet connection. Minimum required free disk space to install the Geant4 Virtual Machine is about 25 GB; the recommended amount of RAM is 4 GB or over.

The Geant4 Virtual Machine (see instructions) is the only supported installation of Geant4. Users must have this installed on their machine, to undertake the exercises in an environment which supports all necessary functionality. We will organise a dedicated Zoom session for those participants who face difficulties installing or have questions about it.

Users are encouraged to create an additional installation on their system with native compilers, to facilitate long-term use, if they are knowledgeable about their operating system (typically using Linux, macOS or Windows). Supported systems and C++ compilers for these are listed in the Geant4 Installation Guide. If you have questions about whether your machine is appropriate, or problems about installing Geant4, see the Geant4 Installation Guide, and/or the Geant4 Installation and Configuration Discussion Forum.

Pre-requisites: 

• Basic knowledge of the C++ language 
• Basic knowledge of Monte Carlo simulation techniques 
• Availability of a machine with Virtual Machine pre-installed

Objectives: 

• Acquire basic understanding of particle transport Monte Carlo
• Acquire basic knowledge and first experience in using the Geant4 simulation toolkit

Geant4 web site

Monday 15 April

1 Introduction

• scope and goal of this course
• a short introduction to Geant4
• introduction of some important Geant4 concepts such as run, event, track, etc.

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

Github project with the course material

InfoOnCourseMaterials.pdf

Introduction - Slides

Recording of Session (missing first 10 minutes)

15:30 Break

2 Preliminaries

• introduction of our work environment (i.e. the virtual machine installation,
  demystification of Geant4 install and CMake configuration, etc.)
• recapitulation of some object oriented concept of C++ crucial for the course
  (such as interface and their usage)

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

Recording of Day 1, Session 2

18:00 Adjourn

Tuesday 16 April

3 Detector Description

• introduction of the G4VUserDetectorConstruction interface
• introduction to the Geant4 geometry description
• introduction to the Geant4 material description

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

end-of-monday.tar.gz

README.txt

Recording of Day 2, Session 1

15:30 Break

4 Implementation of the Detector-Construction of our application

• we will develop the main of our application then we start to implement the
  mandatory components, first the DetectorConstruction, i.e. the detector
  geometry and material description

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

Recording - Day 2 Session 2

18:00 Adjourn

Wednesday 17 April

5 Complete the Detector-Construction implementation

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

end-of-tuesday.tar.gz

mid-wed.tar.gz

README.txt

Recording - Day 3 (both sessions)

15:30 Coffee break

6 Primary particle generation

• a (very basic) look behind multi-threaded Geant4
• introduction of the G4VUserPrimaryGeneratorAction and usage
• introduction of G4VUserActionInitialization interface
• implementation of the primary generator of our application

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

18:00 Adjourn

Thursday 18 April

7 Complete the primary generator implementation

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

end-of-wednesday.tar.gz

mid.tar.gz

Recording - Day 4 Session 1

15:40 Coffee break

8 Introduction to (some of) the further Geant4 user actions

• recapitulation of the related Geant4 concepts (run, event, step)
• introduction of the Stepping-, Event- and Run-Actions and the related Geant4
  interfaces (G4UserRunAction, G4UserEventAction, G4UserSteppingAction)
• implement the remaining user actions of our application

Speaker: Mihaly Novak (CERN)

Recording - Day 4 Session 2

18:00 Adjourn

Friday 19 April

9 Add some flexibility to our application through UI commands

• introduction to Geant4 UI commands
• implement some UI commands to allow e.g. change of the target material, thickness

Speakers: John Apostolakis (CERN), Mihaly Novak (CERN)

end-of-thursday.tar.gz

Recording of Day 5 Session 1

15:30 Coffee break

10 Recap

• enjoy using the application that we developed together, compare the results
  with experimental data
• summary of the course and outlook

Speaker: John Apostolakis (CERN)

end-of-friday.tar.gz

Recording of Day 5 Session 2

workdir-friday.tar.gz

18:00 Adjourn