Geant4 Geometry and Transport Working Group Meeting
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Status and Plans for 2025: Brief Reports and Discussion
Round-table discussion of 2024 achievements and proposed 2025 deliverables / work topics
- Proposed objectives / deliverables
- Improved GPU navigation using surfaces (VecGeom) - Severin & Andre
- Improvements in stability
- Merge into VecGeom master (targetting release 2.0)
- Optimisation
- Improved GPU navigation using surfaces (VecGeom) - Severin & Andre
- Progress reports and items of ongoing contribution
- Raman S. : looking to resume contributing to VecGeom, including attending bi-weekly meetings
- Guilherme L. : in 2024 fixed a few solids' implementations, created implementations of shapes for surface model, and investigated issues; intend to contribute in similar manner in 2025.
- Ben M. : have & will tackle issues related to CMake configuration ; investigating use of HepNumerics (geant4/global category) use and optimisation in Geant4 in general - so any relevant to geometry will be included in this.
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Ivana H. : reconsile the defaults of the field module with the default of the new Field ‘Builder’ classes
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Seth J. : discussed the use of geometry debugging tools for potential contribution,
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a material scanner, for identifying problems with the different geometry modellers and implementations of solids (e.g. identified issue with twisted solid later reported by CMS )
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a second tool provides a graphical representation of the isotropic safety distance on a place (or other 2-d surfaces?); useful for debugging this.
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Evgueni: (2024 & future) implroving the robustness and performance of various G4Solids. In 2024 these were: twisted Tubs, Generic Trap, poly-cone and polyhedra. Also extending their testing suites.
New topics for investigation (Stewart B.)
- Symplecticity of navigation can be destroyed in the case of a multiple volume geometry by repeated geometry transformation, in inaccuracies due to the composition of rotations. For simpler use cases (likely including a g-2 type experiment) a simple solution is to create a single large volume with the field and geometry of the setup. Potentially a geometry with just surfaces, that does not require transformations will help? For complex cases where multiple volumes are required, a new approach may be required.
- To note as topic for future consideration: "Symplecticity and the impact of inaccuracies due to repeated composition of transformations (or from errors due simply to displacements from the inaccuracies going around a single revolution being amplified by repeated application)"
- Stewart will gives us a reference or excerpt to document this issue
- Interest in having a geometry modeller that allows the user to define a geometry setup using intersections of planes and quadratic (quadric?) half-spaces (‘half-space representation’) to address use cases from accelerator application - ranging from LHC to medical applications.
- Many geometries are described for simulation by FLUKA / MCNP / PHITS, and for simulation in Geant4 currently the geometry must be recreated, which is a significant burden
- potential for performant implementation of these geometries with a compatible geometry modeller mentioned
- Potential approaches discussed
- developing Orange further for use by MCNP derived, OpenMC and related (FLUKA / PHITS) geometry descriptions ; an approach that adapted this to the G4 geometry state (a la ALICE / TGeo to G4 ) - Seth
- consulting with Fluka team on their plans for a Geant4-embedded navigation system
- [ recalled later / John ] a way to describe solids using half-spaces created by a student from Germany ( we should still have access to his repository - to be confirmed. )
- Agreed to organise a dedicated meeting to discuss this in more depth.
- Many geometries are described for simulation by FLUKA / MCNP / PHITS, and for simulation in Geant4 currently the geometry must be recreated, which is a significant burden
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Reports, Open Topics and Plans - roundtable
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Key goals for 2025
Recall topics mentioned in 2024:
Navigation / modelling
- Vecgeom surface-based modeller
Performance / interfaces
- Reduction of initialisation time and overlap checking using Multi-Threading
Field:
- Robustness improvement of QSS3
- High order symplectic stepper (needs person)Impact / Coupling with other developments (in Geometry & Transport and beyond)
See Deliverables (2023 & 2024) and potential deliverables (future)
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Discussion
- Proposed objectives / deliverables
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VecGeom bi-weekly progress meeting: Status Updates, open issues, plans
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AOB: Other topics
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