Electron and ion elastic scattering modeling in Geant4-DNA

International audienceThe general purpose Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Geant4 is currently being extended for the simulation of biological effects of ionizing radiation at the cellular and DNA scales, in the framework of the Geant4-DNA project, an activity of the Geant4 collaboration which was initiated by the European Space Agency for the prediction of direct and non-direct radiobiological damages in long duration manned space exploration missions [1]. A complete set of physics processes is already available to Geant4 users for the modeling of the physical interactions of electrons, protons, neutral hydrogen atoms and alpha particles including their charged states in liquid water, the main component of biological medium [2]