Regular Article

Latest FLUKA developments

¹ European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
² University of Padova, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Padova, Italy
³ University of Manchester and Cockcroft Institute, Department of Physics and Astronomy, School of Natural Sciences, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom
⁴ The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC, ELI Beamlines Facility, Za Radnicí 835, 252 41 Dolní Břežany, Czech Republic
⁵ Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Physics, Lausanne, Switzerland
⁶ University of Montpellier, Institute of Electronics and Systems, Montpellier, France
⁷ University of Granada, Department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics, Granada, Spain
⁸ Technical University of Munich (TUM), Department of Physics, Munich, Germany
⁹ Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, and “Horia Hulubei” National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest-Magurele, Romania
¹⁰ Uppsala University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala, Sweden
¹¹ European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Geel, Belgium
¹² University of Zurich (UZH), Physik-Institut, Zurich, Switzerland

^* e-mail: gabrielle.hugo@cern.ch

Received: 11 June 2024
Received in final form: 18 June 2024
Accepted: 2 October 2024
Published online: 2 December 2024

Abstract

The FLUKA Monte Carlo code has recently undergone significant enhancements, driven by needs from its user community. Key improvements are discussed, such as a new point-wise treatment for the interactions of low-energy neutrons, the incorporation of a new model for nuclear elastic scattering of protons below 250 MeV, explicit generation of synchrotron radiation photons during charged particle tracking, a revised modeling approach for coherent effects in bent crystals, and the addition of arc-DPA scoring. While improving and extending FLUKA physics performance is essential, it is equally important to ensure the long-term maintainability of the codebase. This paper also outlines the strategy and substantial progress in evolving FLUKA to meet this objective. The FLUKA features are being translated into a new codebase, fulfilling essential criteria such as continuity in the user experience and compatibility with existing inputs, thus laying the foundation for a new FLUKA generation. The codebase makes use of the Geant4 toolkit when appropriate. Additionally, the enhanced collaboration with Geant4 has resulted in the development of an interface, detailed in this paper, that enables access to the FLUKA hadronic models from any Geant4 application.