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Mashnik, Stepan G.

Publications and source records attributed to Mashnik, Stepan G..

12 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

Energetic Light Fragment Production Capability in MCNP6

Monte Carlo Methods, Codes, and Applications group within the Computational Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory has led the development of the transport code MCNP6 (Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code, version 6). MCNP6 is a general-purpose, continuous energy, generalized-geometry, time-dependent, Monte-Carlo radiation-transport code designed to track many particle types over broad ranges of energies. It is used around the world in applications ranging from radiation protection and dosimetry, nuclear-reactor design, nuclear criticality safety, detector design and analysis, decontamination and decommissioning, accelerator applications, medical physics, space research, and beyond. At lower energies, the code uses tables of evaluated nuclear data, while for higher energies (> 150 MeV), MCNP6 uses the cascade-exciton model, version 03.03 (CEM03.03), and the Los Alamos quark-gluon string model, version 03.03 (LAQGSM03.03) to model nuclear reactions. Emission of energetic heavy clusters heavier than {sup 4}He from nuclear reactions play a critical role in several applications, including electronics performance in space, human radiation dosages in space or other extreme radiation environments, proton- and hadron-therapy in medical physics, accelerator and shielding applications, and more. None of the available models are able to accurately predict emission of light fragments (LF) from arbitrary reactions. The CEM and LAQGSM event generators in MCNP6 describe quite well the spectra of fragments with sizes up to {sup 4}He across a broad range of target masses and incident energies (up to ∼ 5 GeV for CEM and up to ∼ 1 TeV/A for LAQGSM). However, they do not predict the high-energy tails of LF spectra heavier than {sup 4}He well. Most LF with energies above several tens of MeV are emitted during the precompound stage of a reaction. The 03.03 versions of CEM and LAQGSM do not account for precompound emission of LF larger than {sup 4}He. The goal of this research is to enable MCNP6 to produce high-energy light fragments. These energetic LF may be emitted by our models through three processes: Fermi breakup, preequilibrium, and coalescence. We explore the emission of light fragments through each of these mechanisms and demonstrate an improved agreement with experimental data achieved by extending precompound models to include emission of fragments heavier than {sup 4}He. (authors)

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

MCNP6 High-energy Event Generators

This report presents a brief description of all high-energy event generators used by MCNP6, namely, of the intranuclear cascade models (INC); Fermi breakup models; coalescence models; preequilibrium nuclear reactions; evaporation reactions; and of the fission reaction models.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

MCNP6 simulation of light and medium nuclei fragmentation at intermediate energies

Fragmentation reactions induced on light and medium nuclei by protons and light nuclei of energies around 1 GeV/nucleon and below are studied with the Los Alamos transport code MCNP6 and with its CEM03.03 and LAQGSM03.03 event generators. CEM and LAQGSM assume that intermediate-energy fragmentation reactions on light nuclei occur generally in two stages. The first stage is the intranuclear cascade (INC), followed by the second, Fermi breakup disintegration of light excited residual nuclei produced after the INC. CEM and LAQGSM account also for coalescence of light fragments (complex particles) up to sup>4 He from energetic nucleons emitted during INC. We investigate the validity and performance of MCNP6, CEM, and LAQGSM in simulating fragmentation reactions at intermediate energies and discuss possible ways of further improving these codes.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Nuclear excitation functions from 40 to 200 MeV proton irradiation of terbium

Nuclear formation cross sections are reported for 26 radionuclides, measured with 40–200 MeV proton irradiations of terbium foils. These data provide the basis for the production of medically relevant radionuclides (e.g., 152 Tb, 155 Tb, 155 Eu, and 156 Eu) and 153 Gd, a potential source used in ongoing efforts to characterize stellar nucleosynthesis routes. Computational predictions from the ALICE2011, CEM03.03, Bertini, and INCL + ABLA codes are also compared with newly measured data to contribute to the ongoing process of code development, and yields are calculated for selected radionuclides using measured data.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2015

Total reaction cross sections in CEM and MCNP6 at intermediate energies

Accurate total reaction cross section models are important to achieving reliable predictions from spallation and transport codes. The latest version of the Cascade Exciton Model (CEM) as incorporated in the code CEM03.03, and the Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code (MCNP6), both developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), each use such cross sections. Having accurate total reaction cross section models in the intermediate energy region (50 MeV to 5 GeV) is very important for different applications, including analysis of space environments, use in medical physics, and accelerator design, to name just a few. The current inverse cross sections used in the preequilibrium and evaporation stages of CEM are based on the Dostrovsky et al. model, published in 1959. Better cross section models are now available. Implementing better cross section models in CEM and MCNP6 should yield improved predictions for particle spectra and total production cross sections, among other results.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Validation and Verification of MCNP6 Against High-Energy Experimental Data and Calculations by Other Codes. III. The MPI Testing Primer

This primer presents a set of Validation and Verification (V&V) MCNP6 results calculated in parallel, with MPI, obtained mostly using its event generators at intermediate and high-energies, but also several examples of results using data libraries at energies below 150 MeV, against various recent experimental data. It is the third part of a set of MCNP6 Testing Primers, after its first, LA-UR-11-05129, and second, LA-UR-11-05627, publications. The MCNP6 test-problems discussed here are presented in the /VALIDATION CEM/, /VALIDATION LAQGSM/, and /DELAYED PARTICLES/ subdirectories in the MCNP6 /Testing/ directory. README files that contain short descriptions of every input file, the experiment, the quantity of interest that the experiment measures and its description in the MCNP6 output files, and the publication reference of that experiment are presented for every test-problem. Templates for plotting the corresponding results with xmgrace as well as pdf files with figures representing the final results of our V&V efforts are presented. Several technical “bugs” in MCNP6 while running it in parallel with MPI using its event generators were discovered during our current V&V of MCNP6 and were fixed mostly by Dr. Jeffrey S. Bull. Our results show that MCNP6 using its CEM03.03, LAQGSM03.03, Bertini, INCL+ABLA, and ISABEL event generators describes, as a rule, reasonably well different intermediate- and high-energy measured data and agrees very well with calculations by other codes. Just as expected, the MCNP6 results obtained with MPI are practically the same as the ones calculated with MCNP6 in a sequential mode. This primer isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover. Readers may skip some sections and go directly to a test-problem they are interested in.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2004

Propagation of Cosmic Rays: Nuclear Physics in Cosmic-ray Studies

The nuclei fraction in cosmic rays (CR) far exceeds the fraction of other CR species, such as antiprotons, electrons, and positrons. Thus the majority of information obtained from CR studies is based on interpretation of isotopic abundances using CR propagation models where the nuclear data and isotopic production cross sections in p- and alpha-induced reactions are the key elements. This paper presents an introduction to the astrophysics of CR and diffuse gamma-rays and dimsses some of the puzzles that have emerged recently due to more precise data and improved propagation models. Merging with cosmology and particle physics, astrophysics of CR has become a very dynamic field with a large potential of breakthrough and discoveries in the near fume. Exploiting the data collected by the CR experiments to the fullest requires accurate nuclear cross sections.

Moskalenko, Igor V.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Challenging Cosmic Ray Propagation with Antiprotons: Evidence for a "Fresh" Nuclei Component?

Recent measurements of the cosmic ray (CR) antiproton flux have been shown to challenge existing CR propagation models. It was shown that the reacceleration models designed to match secondary to primary nuclei ratio (e.g., Boron/Carbon) produce too few antiprotons, while the traditional non-reacceleration models can reproduce the antiproton flux but fall short of explaining the low-energy decrease in the secondary to primary nuclei ratio. Matching both the secondary to primary nuclei ratio and antiproton flux requires artificial breaks in the diffusion coefficient and the primary injection spectrum suggesting the need for other approaches. In the present paper we discuss one possibility to overcome these difficulties. Using the measured antiproton flux to fix the diffusion coefficient, we show that the spectra of primary nuclei as measured in the heliosphere may contain a fresh local unprocessed component at low energies, thus decreasing the measured secondary to primary nuclei ratio. A model reproducing antiprotons, B/C ratio, and abundances up to Ni is presented.

Moskalenko, Igor V.↗