PenNuc: Monte Carlo simulation of the decay of radionuclides
Description
The Fortran subroutine package PenNuc that performs Monte Carlo simulation of the decay of radioactive nuclides is described. The adopted nuclear decay characteristics (possible disintegration modes and branching ratios, energies and half-lives of nuclear energy levels, types and energies of emitted particles) are from the NUCLEIDE evaluated database ( http://www.nucleide.org/DDEP_WG/DDEPdata.htm) in the specific format PenNuc. The initial energies of electrons and positrons emitted in beta disintegrations are sampled from their continuous spectra by means of the RITA (rational inverse transform with aliasing) algorithm, which is described in the Appendix. Electronic relaxation of the residual ion after electron capture and internal conversion is simulated by using the data and sampling methods of the PENELOPE code system. At each call the subroutines deliver a list of state variables of the particles (photons, electrons, positrons and alphas) emitted in a random decay path of the considered radionuclide down to a metastable level or to the ground state of the daughter nucleus. The distribution package includes a main program that simulates the emission spectrum of a radionuclide and, optionally, produces a list of particles emitted in a prescribed number of decays.