Update PROPOSAL to version 7.4.0

This PR updates the version of PROPOSAL to its newest release v7.4.0 (see here for the total release notes)

The changes directly relevant to CORSIKA 8 are the following:

• The Photoeffect is now included as a process. It is by default enabled. This should stabilize the simulation of the EM shower component for low energies.

• PROPOSAL now issues a warning when tables are not available and need to be created. They look like this:

  [2022-08-18 11:15:59.980] [TableCreation] [warning] Tables are not available and need to be created. They will be written to '/home/jean/CORSIKA_DATA/PROPOSAL'. This can take some minutes.

  This solves issue #522 (closed)

• Tables are now saved as .dat files instead of .txt files. This solves issue #500 (closed)

• PROPOSAL now uses a 1D interpolation tables to store the mean free path of a particle. This should significantly improve the time spent in PROPOSAL and should help solve issue #519

• The KinematicLimits of BremsElectronScreening, the parametrization used to describe bremsstrahlung for electrons and positrons, have been adapted (see this presentation by Alexander for more details). This might have an influence on the number of electromagnetic particles at low energies (< 50 MeV):

I will make some checks to investigate the changes of this PR and post them to this PR before opening it for review.

added EM Logging labels

assigned to @JAlameddine

added 1 commit

• 807c8df9 - Include most recent PROPOSAL patch

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added 1 commit

• 771cdfa1 - add proposal 7.4.2

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The new PROPOSAL patch is now included as well. The included patch now allow us to go down to lower EnergyCuts for electromagnetic showers.

As a first check, I've simulated 1000 1 TeV electron-induced showers with a cut setting of 0.5 MeV. For energies this low, multiple scattering effects become even more important, so I've simulated them additionally with the "quickfix" enabled. In this case, both charge excess and the number of charged particles agree within a few percent when compared to C7. Photon profiles still show a different behavior

.

The runtime improvement with this new patch is on the expected level (~15%).

marked this merge request as ready

added Ready for Code Review label

approved this merge request

approved this merge request

@JAlameddine, did you run all the tests successfully?

Which tests exactly? Is the current procedure for MR to run all tests locally?

added 8 commits

• 771cdfa1...cec2bdd0 - 5 commits from branch master
• 05ea4fd0 - Update PROPOSAL to version 7.4.0
• ba2df5b5 - Include most recent PROPOSAL patch
• 4100e9ec - add proposal 7.4.2

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resolved all threads

mentioned in commit abaf7072

merged

This is merged. Can all the related issues be closed now?