Electro and gamma nuclear physics in Geant4

Abstract

Adequate description of electro and gamma nuclear physics is of utmost importance in studies of electron beam-dumps and intense electron beam accelerators. I also is mandatory to describe neutron backgrounds and activation in linear colliders. This physics was elaborated in Geant4 over the last year, and now entered into the stage of practical application. In the {\sc Geant4} Photo-nuclear data base there are at present about 50 nuclei for which the Photo-nuclear absorption cross sections have been measured. Of these, data on 14 nuclei are used to parametrize the gamma nuclear reaction cross-section The resulting cross section is a complex, factorized function of $A$ and $e = log(E_γ)$, where $E_γ$ is the energy of the incident photon. Electro-nuclear reactions are so closely connected with Photo-nuclear reactions that sometimes they are often called ``Photo-nuclear''. The one-photon exchange mechanism dominates in Electro-nuclear reactions, and the electron can be substituted by a flux of photons. Folding this flux with the gamma-nuclear cross-section, we arrive at an acceptable description of the electro-nuclear physics. Final states in gamma and electro nuclear physics are described using chiral invariant phase-space decay at low gamma or equivalent photon energies, and quark gluon string model at high energies. We will present the modeling of this physics in {\sc Geant4}, and show results from practical applications.