Electron Transport in Gaseous Detectors with a Python-based Monte Carlo Simulation Code

TL;DR

This paper introduces PyBoltz, a Python-based Monte Carlo simulation tool for electron transport in gases, offering comparable accuracy and speed to MagBoltz, with extended capabilities for particle detector development.

Contribution

Refactorization of MagBoltz into open-source Python code (PyBoltz) with added features, maintaining accuracy and speed, to support particle physics detector research.

Findings

PyBoltz matches MagBoltz outputs in electron transport simulations.

PyBoltz demonstrates comparable simulation speed to MagBoltz.

Extended with a new Modified Effective Range Theory interface.

Abstract

Understanding electron drift and diffusion in gases and gas mixtures is a topic of central importance for the development of modern particle detection instrumentation. The industry-standard MagBoltz code has become an invaluable tool during its 20 years of development, providing capability to solve for electron transport (`swarm') properties based on a growing encyclopedia of built-in collision cross sections. We have made a refactorization of this code from FORTRAN into Cython, and studied a range of gas mixtures of interest in high energy and nuclear physics. The results from the new open source PyBoltz package match the outputs from the original MagBoltz code, with comparable simulation speed. An extension to the capabilities of the original code is demonstrated, in implementation of a new Modified Effective Range Theory interface. We hope that the versatility afforded by the new Python code-base will encourage continued use and development of the MagBoltz tools by the particle physics community.