$Id: README,v 1.14 2009/11/20 18:08:53 santin Exp $ ------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================= Geant4 - X-Ray Telescope Example ========================================================= Introduction ------------ XrayTel is an advanced Geant4 example based on a realistic simulation of an X-ray Telescope. It is based on work carried out by a team of Geant4 experts to simulate the interaction between X-ray Telescopes XMM-Newton and Chandra with low energy protons present in the orbital radiation background. The X-ray mirrors are designed to collect x-ray photons at grazing-incidence angles and focus them onto detectors at the focal plane. However, this mechanism also seems to work for low energy protons which, if they reach the detectors in sufficient numbers, can cause damage. In this example, the geometry has been simplified by using a single mirror shell and no baffles, but all the dimensions and materials are realistic. The aim of this advanced example is to illustrate the use advanced GUI, visualisation, particle generation and analysis schemes available in Geant4: - macros are provided to display the geometry and particle tracks with OpenGL, DAWN Postscript or VRML visualisation - the generation of particles is done via the new General Particle Source - histograming facilities are available through the AIDA 3.0 interfaces. - on-line visualisation of histograms is provided through the AIDA 3.0 interface. In order to be able to use any of these packages, prior installation is necessary and a number of environment variables will have to be set. NOTE: The geometry is refreshed on the viewer at the beginning of each run, but the tracks are plotted only in case an interesting event occurs. This is the case only for about 1 every 10**4 events. 2. Run To execute a sample simulation with visualisation of proton tracks reaching the detector run: XrayTel execute command "/control/execute xxxxx.mac" visualisation macros provided are - opengl.mac for OpenGL display - vrml.mac for VRML display and output file - dawn.mac for dawn display and PS output file To execute a run without visualisation use - test.mac If the analysis options are set, histograming windows will automatically open and the corresponding files will be created. A 1D histogram will display the energy distribution of the protons that reach the detector at the end of the run. 3. Detector description The telescope and detector geometry is defined in XrayTelDetectorConstruction.cc 4. Physics processes The physics processes are in XrayTelPhysicsList.cc The main process in this example is G4hMultipleScattering for scattering of the protons off the mirror surfaces. 5. Event generation This is done using the new General Particle Source. Documentation for this can be found in: http://reat.space.qinetiq.com/gps/ 6. Analysis In case the variable G4ANALYSIS_USE is set: setenv G4ANALYSIS_USE 1 relevant information from the simulation is processed in the XrayTelAnalysis class and saved, through the AIDA interface, to Histograms and Tuples. Compilation and link flags to hook any AIDA compliant system are passed to the Geant4 GNUmakefile system by using the "aida-config" tool that should come with any AIDA compliant system. Specifically in the GNUmakefile you find the 2 lines: CPPFLAGS += `aida-config --include` LDFLAGS += `aida-config --lib` For more information about AIDA please look at: http://aida.freehep.org/ Presently, tools - OpenScientist (http://openscientist.lal.in2p3.fr/) - JAS (http://jas.freehep.org/jas3/) - iAIDA (http://iaida.dynalias.net/Intro.html) provide an implementation of AIDA 3.2.1 To build and execute the example on platforms where there is no implementation of the analysis system, the environment variables must not be set.