Volume-dependent process properties

If processes can behave differently in different regions (e.g. material-dependent energy cuts or thresholds), we need a way of mapping between processes and volumes.

• Volumes do not know which processes are in the ProcessSequence.
• Processes need to "inject" their needed properties into the volume objects.
• Perhaps even position dependency is needed for inhomogeneous materials?

I am not sure. The logical flow of information is:

• you have a list of processes, which you go through one by one
• each process checks what is needed based on the trajectory, which can of course be used to retrieve properties and identity of the volumes and materials.
• each process decides what is does in a specific environment.

-> the volumes do not need to no anything about the process list!

Of course, the predictions of a process will typically change with the properties of the volume. This is natural, and includes position-dependence.

So, this is probably no issue after all....?

Think of an example, where extra logic would be needed.

closed

You gave the example yourself in #103 (closed).

reopened

changed milestone to %ICRC2019

Actually, I think this is not such a big deal anymore. The environment is easily extensible. You just define another (abstract) propery interface class and one or more implementations of it and then you can query your needed constants from the Volume tree.

However, I think it is necessary also for other reasons to get rid of a fixed setup/setupEnvironment.h and make the whole environment class templated in the same way as processes are templated regarding the stack.

Aha. So maybe we should come up with a way where the ProcessSequence returns the IEnvironmentModel interface as a consequence of all included Processes. If we define Physics and Environment, there must be consistency in the properties available in all mediums. There will be default algorithms that can calculate many properties from data tables, or other properties, like refractive index from density, temperature, etc.

The properties must be specified by the users during the construction of the environment-volume tree. In particular eventual inhomogeneity must be inherent to a particular environment model (differential atmosphere vs. homogeneous atmosphere etc.).

Initially I was confused by the title of this Issue "Volume-dependent process properties" while here we talk about "Process-dependent volume properties", which I perfectly see, too.

Yes, you are right. The setup/setupEnvironment is not needed (and dangerous) since this is determined by the processes of the ProcessSequence already, and it must be consistent - otherwise it would crash immediately. Max, if you prefer close this Issue and continue this discussion/development wherever you think it is most appropriate.

closed