I am trying to simulate a radioactive source of Tritium (H3) against a silicon detector. A first experiment I want to do is to measure the deposited energy spectrum of this radioisotope in a pure cube of silicon. I assumed that Tritium was condidered a Generic Ion so I added the Radioactive Decay process to this but I was quite surprised when I couldn´t simulate this radioisotope (I had done previous experiments with other radioisotopes as C14 and S35 successfully). After a week playing with the thresholds in energy and range, the support service told me that Triton is not considered Generic Ions and so, it´s not considered unstable, so I can´t add the Radioactive Decay process to this radioisotope, it doesn´t decay, so it doesn´t generate the typical beta-electrons of this source that I´m trying to detect. I think this is a bug in Geant4 because this radioisotope is unstable and should be considered to add the Radioactive Decay process to this radioisotope.
It is not a bug. Tritium has long life time (12.33 year) and is regarded as "stable" nuclei for most cases. If you want to simulate decay of Tritium, add the Radioactive decay to the Tritium as well as GenericIon. Please do not forget to set life time to Tritium before adding the Radioactive decay. (see below) G4RadioactiveDecay* theRadioactiveDecay = new G4RadioactiveDecay(); Triton()->SetPDGLifeTime(12.33*365*24*3600*second); G4ProcessManager* pmanager = Triton()->GetProcessManager(); pmanager ->AddProcess(theRadioactiveDecay); pmanager ->SetProcessOrdering(theRadioactiveDecay, idxPostStep); pmanager ->SetProcessOrdering(theRadioactiveDecay, idxAtRest);
