TRIUMF, Vancouver
The simulation toolkit GEANT4 has been used to create high-level tools for specific user groups, such as SPENVIS in space physics and GATE in medical imaging. In Accelerator Physics, comparable efforts are being devoted to develop general-purpose programs for simulating beamlines and accelerators, allowing access to Geant4's facilities for 3D geometry, tracking, and interactions in matter without the need for specialised programming techniques. In this study we investigate the use of two high-level tools based on Geant4, G4BEAMLINE and BDSIM, to model a 65-meter beam line supplying protons from the TRIUMF cyclotron to the ISAC RIB facility. We outline the rather different approaches to defining the beamline geometry (including cyclotron extraction foil and exit region) in each code. Their diagnostic and visualisation features are also compared. Due to its ability to model some important aspects such as rectangular dipoles and magnetic fringe fields, G4beamline was utilized for a series of simulations presented here, investigating the distribution of losses in the beamline, the role of scattering in the cyclotron extraction foil, and the sensitivity of losses to tuning parameters.
