Particle generation through energy discretization and restrictive planes in GEANT4 simulations for potential applications of cosmic ray muon tomography

Abstract

Abstract In this study, by attempting to resolve the difficulties related to the angular distribution during the particle generation for the muon tomography applications in the GEANT4 simulations, we exhibit an unconventional methodology that is hinged on the direction limitation via the vectorial construction from the generation location to the restriction area rather than using a certain angular distribution or interval. In other words, we favor a momentum direction that is determined by a vector constructed between an initial point randomly chosen on a generative point/plane and a second point arbitrarily selected on a restrictive plane of the same dimensions with the basal cross section of the volume-of-interest (VOI). On account of setting out such a generation scheme, we optimize the particle loss by keeping an angular acceptance that is directly dependent on the VOI geometry as well as the vertical position of the restrictive plane for a tomographic system of a finite size. We demonstrate our strategy for a set of target materials including aluminum, iron, copper, lead, and uranium with a dimension of 40×10×40 cm3 over three restrictive planes of different positions by using a discrete energy spectrum between 0.1 and 8 GeV and we compute the scattering angle, the number of absorption, and the particle loss. Upon our simulation outcomes, we show that the particle generation by means of restrictive planes is an effective strategy that is flexible towards a variety of computational objectives in the GEANT4 simulations.