Geant4 8.2 Release Notes
December 15th, 2006



The code and binary libraries for the supported systems are available through our Source Code Web page.

Please refer to the Geant4 User Documentation for further information about using Geant4.

Contents

  1. Supported and Tested Platforms
  2. CLHEP and AIDA
  3. Items for migration of the user code
  4. Known Run-Time Problems
  5. Compilation Warnings
  6. Known Run-Time Warnings
  7. Geant4 Software License
  8. Detailed list of changes and fixes


1. Supported and Tested Platforms

Official platforms: More verified configurations: Platforms configured but not tested and not supported:


2. CLHEP and AIDA

Geant4 8.2 requires the installation of CLHEP.
Tests have been performed with CLHEP-2.0.3.1
The software has been verified also with CLHEP-1.9.3.1.

Geant4 8.2 examples with histogramming cowork with analysis tools compliant to AIDA 3.2.1 interfaces.
AIDA headers can be downloaded from: http://aida.freehep.org


3. Items for migration of the user code

Listed here is some relevant information on developments included in this release, some of which may require minor migrations for advanced uses of features in Geant4 in order to upgrade from release 8.1 to release 8.2. Note that a full re-installation of libraries (or a full recompilation) and a recompilation of user applications is anyhow required.

Standard Electromagnetic physics

Some improvements were introduced to multiple scattering, which provide improved results for large angle scattering; better particle transport near geometry boundaries and less cut dependence for sampling calorimeters (see details in Physics Reference Manual).
A new class G4hMultipleScattering has been created to provide faster simulation of hadron transport. This class uses the same multiple scattering model configured to reduce step limitation. It is used for hadrons and ions in most physics lists.
A new module polarization is introduced for simulation of circular polarized beams of e+- and gamma.
The change in response of calorimeters, due to the revision of the multiple scattering process (in its default configuration) is expected to be less than 1%. Larger differences are seen in the revised configuration, which does not apply most step limitations for electons and that is used in the QGSP_EMV physics list.

Hadronic physics

Reviewed coherent elastic scattering processes: data tables are now computed on-flight and the G4ELASTIC data set is no longer necessary.
New data sets are required for this release, see details below.

Physics Lists

The physics list module has been moved inside the source tree; as such it is now built as part of the kernel libraries by default. The number of libraries has been reduced to two; it is now possible to use them together with shared libraries (or DLL on Windows) and global libraries.


4. Known Run-Time Problems and Limitations

For a complete list of outstanding run-time problems and to submit any problem you may find running this version of Geant4, please refer to the Geant4 Problem Reporting System.


5. Compilation Warnings

There may be compilation warnings on some platforms. We do not believe that any will lead to incorrect run-time behaviour.


6. Known Run-Time Warnings

The following message can be written to error output while tracking. We believe it does not give rise to incorrect behaviour.
    G4PropagateInField: Warning: Particle is looping 
    -  tracking in field will be stopped. 
       It has performed 1000 steps in Field while a maximum of 1000
       are allowed. 


7. Geant4 Software License

A Software License applies to the Geant4 code. The details and the list of copyright holders is available at http://cern.ch/geant4/license and also in a text file LICENSE distributed with the source code.


8. Detailed list of changes and fixes

These are the main new features/fixes included in this release since the last patched public release (for the detailed list of fixes/additions, please refer to the related History files provided in most packages):

Configuration

Digitazation & Hits

Electromagnetic Processes (High-energy and Standard)

Electromagnetic Processes (Low-energy)

Event

General Processes: Parameterisation, Scoring, Transportation

Geometry

Global

Graphical Representations

Hadronic Processes

Intercoms

Materials

Particles

Persistency

Run

Track and Tracking

Visualization

Environments

Physics lists

Data sets

Examples