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Accurate condensed history Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport. II. Application to ion chamber response simulations
Author(s) -
Kawrakow I.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.598918
Subject(s) - monte carlo method , convergence (economics) , computational physics , statistical physics , electron , physics , ion , mathematics , nuclear physics , statistics , quantum mechanics , economics , economic growth
In this report the condensed history Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport and its application to the calculation of ion chamber response is discussed. It is shown that the strong step‐size dependencies and lack of convergence to the correct answer previously observed are the combined effect of the following artifacts caused by the EGS4/PRESTA implementation of the condensed history technique: dose underprediction due to PRESTA 's pathlength correction and lateral correlation algorithm; dose overprediction due to the boundary crossing algorithm; dose overprediction due to the breakdown of the fictitious cross section method for sampling distances between discrete interaction and the inaccurate evaluation of energy‐dependent quantities. These artifacts are now understood quantitatively and analytical expressions for their effect are given.