Extracting cross sections of hadronic models

Physics, Transport and Magnetic Fields
1

Dear FLUKA experts,

I am working on studying systematics uncertainties that stem from the assumed hadronic model, specifically in the context of CR flux measurements with space-based detectors. In our analyses, the detector acceptance for a large part depends on the inelastic cross section, as this effectively determines where (at which depth) a particle will start showering in the detector. Being able to directly comparing the absolute values of these inelastic cross sections for different hadronic models would thus be very useful.

My question: Is there an easy way to directly extract the numerical value of the inelastic cross section for a given primary particle and target material? To give just an example, let’s say for instance a 10 TeV He4 nucleus colliding with carbon. In particular, I’m wondering if something similar can be done as in this example (geant4/examples/extended/hadronic/Hadr00 at master · Geant4/geant4 · GitHub) for Geant4.

All the best,
Paul

2

Dear Paul, you can find this information in the output file, independently of the number of simulated histories, where a material table lists the respective inelastic scattering length for beam particles:

 Material         Atomic           Atomic           Density          Inelastic        Elastic          Radiation        Inelastic
 Number&Name      Number           Weight                            Scattering       Scattering       Length           Scattering
                                                                     Length for       Length for                        Length for
                                                                     PROTON   at      PROTON   at                       neutrons at
                                                                     Beam energy      Beam energy                       Threshold
                                                                                                                        Momentum

                                                     g/cm**3            cm               cm               cm               cm
`
3

Hi Francesco,

Okay, I see. So the inelastic scattering length of the primaries is given in the output files, and then that can be converted to a cross section using the particle density of the target material :+1: Thank you for the quick reply!

All the best,
Paul