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.

Using CORSIKA 8 Container Releases

CORSIKA 8 is distributed not only as source code but also as a pre-built container image for use with Apptainer. This container release provides a fully configured and portable runtime environment that includes all necessary dependencies and is ideal for users who want to run CORSIKA 8 without building from source. To use the container, ensure that Apptainer is installed on your system. To execute CORSIKA 8 inside the container, use the apptainer run command, specifying the .sif file. On most systems, you can also execute the container directly. In both cases, you will execute the binary /opt/corsika8/install/bin/c8_air_shower. An example is shown below:

apptainer run /path/to/corsika8.sif -E 1e3 -p 2212 -f output/path/test

This is equivalent to using the container as an executable

/path/to/corsika8.sif -E 1e3 -p 2212 -f output/path/test

If you run the container outside your home directory, you might get failures which result from problems with file access. This often means that your current working directory is not available in the container. You can request additional mounts when running using, for example:

apptainer run --bind $(pwd):$(pwd) /path/to/corsika8.sif -E 1e3 -p 2212 -f output/path/test

Depending on the directory structure on your installation, you might need other or additional bind mount options.

You can explore the contents of the container using an interactive shell

apptainer shell /path/to/corsika8.sif

or running individual commands directly, for example

apptainer exec /path/to/corsika8.sif ls /opt/corsika8/install/bin

Development

For development or contributing to the framework, please refer to the GitLab.