McStasWillendrup, P.; Farhi E.; Knudsen E.; Filges U.; Lefmann K; McStas: past, present and future. Journal of Neutron Research 17, 2014 pp. 35-43 is

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

(

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

) software simulator for neutron scattering experiments. McStas is an abbreviation for Monte carlo Simulation of triple axis spectrometers, but the software can be used to simulate all types of neutron scattering instruments. The software is based on both Monte Carlo methods and ray tracing. A special

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

translates a

domain-specific language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging f ...

describing the neutron instrument geometry and component definitions (written in C) to a stand-alone C code. The basics of McStas was written in 1997 at Risø for simulation of their neutron experiments, that were based at the DR3 reactor that was shut down in year 2000. After the fusion of Risø with the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fi ...

, McStas is currently developed at the Physics department of DTU and

Institut Laue-Langevin An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

, with involvement from the

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics. ...

and Paul Scherrer Institute. The

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

-based Data Management and Software Centre of the

European Spallation Source The European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) is a multi-disciplinary research facility based on the world's most powerful pulsed neutron source. It is currently under construction in Lund, Sweden. The ESS Data Management and Software Centre (DMSC) ...

is also expected to become a partner since many of the future instruments are being simulated using McStas. McXtrace, an equivalent simulation package using X-rays instead of neutrons, started being developed in 2009 and it is now freely available. Official partner sites are * The Physics department at DTU * The

* The

* The Paul Scherrer Institute

References

External links

* Neutron scattering {{scattering-stub

See also

References

External links