PHITS (Package NEA-1931)

Abstract

PHITS (Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System) is a versatile and general purpose particle transport code that can handle the transport of various particles over wide energy ranges. It uses nuclear reaction models and data libraries to accurately simulate the behavior of nucleons, nuclei, mesons, photons, and electrons. PHITS can support your researches in the fields of accelerator technology, radiotherapy, space radiation, and in many other fields which are related to particle and heavy ion transport phenomena.

PHITS incorporates two categories of physical processes: transport and collision. In the transport process, particles can move under external fields and neutral particles move in a straight trajectory with constant energy until the next collision. Charged particles, on the other hand, interact with electrons in the material, losing energy and changing direction. PHITS treats ionization processes as a transport process using the continuous-slowing-down approximation. In the collision process, PHITS can simulate elastic and inelastic interactions as well as particle decay. The total reaction cross section is an important factor in determining the mean free path of the transport particle. PHITS uses the Monte Carlo method to choose the next collision point based on the mean free path and incorporates various models to simulate nuclear reactions at different energy ranges.

PHITS has special features such as the event generator mode, which can determine the profiles of all secondary particles generated from a single nuclear interaction, and the microdosimetric function, which provides probability densities of deposition energy in microscopic sites. These features are useful for various applications such as estimating soft-error rates of semiconductor devices and studying the biological effects of charged particles.

Additionally, PHITS has a visualization function called ANGEL to generate 2D and 3D figures of the calculated results and setup geometries.

License

Peaceful use of the code

The NEA Data Bank Computer Program Service offers license exclusively for peaceful purposes to institutes belonging to pre-approved countries.

For non-preapproved member countries, please contact JAEA phits-license@jaea.go.jp directly.

References

Citation

A. Boudard, J. Cugnon, J.C. David, S. Leray, and D. Mancusi, New potentialities of the Liege intranuclear cascade model for reactions induced by nucleons and light charged particles, Phys. Rev. C 87, 014606 (2013).

Citation

T. Furuta, Y. Koba, S. Hashimoto, W. Chang, S. Yonai, S. Matsumoto, A. Ishikawa, T. Sato, Development of the DICOM-based Monte Carlo dose reconstruction system for a retrospective study on the secondary cancer risk in carbon ion radiotherapy, Phys. Med. Biol. 67 145002 (2022).

Citation

S. Hashimoto and T. Sato, Estimation method of systematic uncertainties in Monte Carlo particle transport simulation based on analysis of variance, J. Nucl. Sci. Technol. 56(4), 345-354 (2019).

Citation

H. Hirayama, Y. Namito, A.F. Bielajew, S.J. Wilderman and W.R. Nelson: “The EGS5 Code System” SLAC-R-730 (2005) and KEK Report 2005-8 (2005)

Citation

O. Iwamoto, N. Iwamoto, S. Kunieda, F. Minato, S. Nakayama,Y. Abe, et al., "Japanese evaluated nuclear data library version 5: JENDL-5", J. Nucl. Sci. Technol., 60(1), 1-60 (2023).

Citation

Y. Iwamoto, T. Sato, S. Hashimoto, T. Ogawa, T. Furuta, S. Abe, T. Kai, N. Matsuda, R. Hosoyamada, K. Niita, Benchmark study of the recent version of the PHITS code, J. Nucl. Sci. Technol. 54, 617-635 (2017).

Citation

Y. Iwamoto, S. Meigo, H. Hashimoto, Estimation of reliable displacements-per-atom based on athermal-recombination-corrected model in radiation environments at nuclear fission, fusion, and accelerator facilities, J. Nucl. Materials 538, 152261 (2020).

Citation

Y. Iwamoto, S. Hashimoto, T. Sato, N. Matsuda, S. Kunieda, Y. Çelik, N. Furutachi, K. Niita, Benchmark study of particle and heavy-ion transport code system using shielding integral benchmark archive and database for accelerator-shielding experiments, J. Nucl. Sci. Technol. 59, 665-675 (2021).

Citation

H. Iwase, K. Niita, T. Nakamura: "Development of general-purpose particle and heavy ion transport Monte Carlo code", J. Nucl. Sci. and Technol. 39, 1142 (2002).

Citation

A. Malins, M. Machida, K. Niita, Continuous energy adjoint transport for photons in PHITS, EPJ Web of Conferences, 153, p.06001_1-06001_9 (2017).

Citation

G. Marsaglia, Xorshift RNGs. Journal of Statistical Software. 8, 14, 1-6 (2003).

Citation

Y. Matsuya, T. Nakano, T. Kai, N. Shikazono, K. Akamatsu, Y. Yoshii, T. Sato, A Simplified Cluster Analysis of Electron Track Structure for Estimating Complex DNA Damage Yields, Int. J. Mol. Sci. 21, 1701 (2020)

Citation

Y. Matsuya, T. Kai, T. Sato, T. Ogawa, Y. Hirata, Y. Yoshii, A. Parisi, T. Liamsuwan, Track-structure modes in particle and heavy ion transport code system (PHITS): application to radiobiological research, Int. J. Radiat. Biol. (2021A).

Citation

Y. Matsuya, T. Kai, T. Sato, T. Liamsuwan, K. Sasaki, H. Nikjoo, Verification of KURBUC-based ion track structure mode for proton and carbon ions in the PHITS code, Phys. Med. Biol. 66, 06NT02 (2021B)

Citation

Y. Nara, N. Otuka, A. Ohnishi, K. Niita, S. Chiba: "Relativistic nuclear collisions at 10A GeV energies from p+Be to Au+Au with the hadronic cascade model", Phys. Rev. C61, 024901 (1999).

Citation

Y. Sawada, Y. Uozumi, S. Nogamine, T. Yamada, Y. Iwamoto, T. Sato and K. Niita: "Intranuclear cascade with emission of light fragment code implemented in the transport code system PHITS", Nucl. Instr. Meth. B 291, 38-44 (2012).

Citation

K. Niita, T. Sato, H. Iwase, H. Nose, H. Nakashima, L. Sihver: "PHITS- a particle and heavy ion transport code system", Radiation Measurements 41, 1080 (2006).

Citation

K. Niita, S. Chiba, T. Maruyama, H. Takada, T. Fukahori, Y. Nakahara and A. Iwamoto: "Analysis of the (N,Xn') reactions by quantum molecular dynamics plus statistical decay model", Phys. Rev. C 52, 2620 (1995)

Citation

T. Ogawa, T. Sato, S. Hashimoto, K. Niita, Development of a reaction ejectile sampling algorithm to recover kinematic correlations from inclusive cross-section data in Monte-Carlo particle transport simulations, Nucl. Instr. Meth. A 763, 575-590 (2014A).

Citation

T. Ogawa, S. Hashimoto, T. Sato, K. Niita, Development of gamma de-excitation model for prediction of prompt gamma-rays and isomer production based on energy-dependent level structure treatment, Nucl. Instr. Meth. B 325, 35-42 (2014B).

A complete description of the project is found at the PHITS website

Training

Training courses are held several times a year and are advertised via the PHITS website.