Verification of high-energy transport codes on the basis of activation data

TL;DR

This study evaluates the accuracy of various high-energy transport codes in predicting nuclide production cross sections by comparing simulations with experimental data from ITEP and GSI, highlighting areas for code improvement.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive validation of multiple high-energy transport codes against experimental activation data across a wide energy range.

Findings

General agreement between ITEP and GSI data.

Deviation factors vary by code and target.

Recommendations for code improvements.

Abstract

Nuclide production cross sections measured at ITEP for the targets of nat-Cr, 56-Fe, nat-Ni, 93-Nb, 181-Ta, nat-W, nat-Pb, 209-Bi irradiated by protons with energies from 40 to 2600 MeV were used to estimate the predictive accuracy of several popular high-energy transport codes. A general agreement of the ITEP data with the data obtained by other groups, including the numerous GSI data measured by the inverse kinematics method was found. Simulations of the measured data were performed with the MCNPX (Bertini and ISABEL options), CEM03.02, INCL4.2+ABLA, INCL4.5+ABLA07, PHITS, and CASCADE.07 codes. Deviation factors between the calculated and experimental cross sections have been estimated for each target and for the whole energy range covered by our measurements. Two-dimensional diagrams of deviation factor values were produced for estimating the predictive power of every code for intermediate, not measured masses of nuclei-targets and bombarding energies of protons. Further improvements of all tested here codes are recommended. In addition, new measurements at ITEP of nuclide yields from a 208-Pb target irradiated by 500 MeV protons are presented. A good agreement between these new data and the GSI measurements obtained by the inverse kinematics method was found