Advances in the treatment of the electromagnetic cascade in the TRIPOLI-4® Monte-Carlo code

Abstract

TRIPOLI-4® is a Monte-Carlo particle-transport code developed at CEA-Saclay (France) that is employed in the domains of nuclear-reactor physics, criticality-safety, shielding/radiation protection and nuclear instrumentation. The goal of this paper is to report on current developments, validation and verification made in TRIPOLI-4® in the treatment of electron/positron/photon transport. The new capabilities and improvements concern refinements to the electron transport algorithm, the introduction of a charge-deposition score, the new thick-target bremsstrahlung option, the upgrade of the bremsstrahlung model and the improvement of electron angular straggling at low energy. The importance of each of the developments above is illustrated by comparisons with calculations performed with other codes and with experimental data.