__NOTOC__ The EGS (Electron Gamma Shower) computer code system is a general purpose package for the

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

simulation of the coupled transport of

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...

s and

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they always ...

s in an arbitrary geometry for particles with energies from a few keV up to several hundreds of GeV. It originated at

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departm ...

but

National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; french: Conseil national de recherches Canada) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research & development. It is the largest federal research ...

and

KEK , known as KEK, is a Japanese organization whose purpose is to operate the largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, situated in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. It was established in 1997. The term "KEK" is also used to refer to the laboratory ...

have been involved in its development since the early 80s. Development of the original EGS code ended with version EGS4. Since then two groups have re-written the code with new physics: * EGSnrc, maintained by the Ionizing Radiation Standards Group, Measurement Science and Standards,

* EGS5, maintained by

, the Japanese particle physics research facility.

EGSnrc

EGSnrc is a general-purpose software toolkit that can be applied to build Monte Carlo simulations of coupled electron-photon transport, for particle energies ranging from 1 keV to 10 GeV. It is widely used internationally in a variety of radiation-related fields. The EGSnrc implementation improves the accuracy and precision of the charged particle transport mechanics and the atomic scattering cross-section data. The charged particle multiple scattering algorithm allows for large step sizes without sacrificing accuracy - a key feature of the toolkit that leads to fast simulation speeds. EGSnrc also includes a C++ class library called egs++ that can be used to model elaborate geometries and particle sources. EGSnrc is open source and distributed on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

under the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 3 and the Affero General Public License. The Free So ...

. Download EGSnrc for free, submit bug reports, and contribute pull requests on a group GitHub page. The documentation for EGSnrc is also available online. EGSnrc is distributed with a wide range of applications that utilize the radiation transport physics to calculate specific quantities. These codes have been developed by numerous authors over the lifetime of EGSnrc to support the large user community. It is possible to calculate quantities such as

absorbed dose Absorbed dose is a dose quantity which is the measure of the energy deposited in matter by ionizing radiation per unit mass. Absorbed dose is used in the calculation of dose uptake in living tissue in both radiation protection (reduction of harmf ...

kerma Kerma was the capital city of the Kerma culture, which was located in present-day Sudan at least 5,500 years ago. Kerma is one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nubia. It has produced decades of extensive excavations and research, in ...

, particle fluence, and much more, with complex geometrical conditions. One of the most well-known EGSnrc applications is BEAMnrc, which was developed as part of the OMEGA project. This was a collaboration between the

and a research group at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. All types of medical

linear accelerators A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beam ...

can be modelled using the BEAMnrc's component module system.

References

External links

NRC-CNRC page for EGSnrc

KEK page for EGS5

EGSnrc Github page

EGSnrc online documentation

EGSnrc subreddit
Monte Carlo software Physics software Medical physics Radiation therapy Monte Carlo particle physics software Free science software {{science-software-stub

EGSnrc

See also

References

External links