CORSIKA 8

A Monte Carlo framework for the simulation of particle showers initiated in the Earth's atmosphere or dense media by high-energy particles from the cosmos

In astroparticle physics, we study high-energy particles arriving from the cosmos at the Earth. These can be charged atomic nuclei (so-called "cosmic rays"), photons, leptons or only weakly-interacting neutrinos. When these particles interact in the Earth's atmosphere or in dense media, they initiate particle cascades that can grow to billions of particles before the so-called "particle shower" is finally absorbed through ionization of the interaction medium.

The simulation of particle showers is a problem of a highly statistical nature, best addressed by a Monte Carlo approach. A very diverse set of processes such as particle interactions, particle propagation and decay need to be treated with high accuracy over a vast parameter space. As these particles can have energies way beyond those reachable by human-made accelerators, also the interaction physics is not fully known, so that a number of different interaction models exist which need to be interchangeable. Electromagnetic emissions from these particle showers, for example optical Cherenkov light or radio waves, can also be calculated in the simulations.