GPU-Accelerated Optical Simulations for the LEGEND Experiment
ORAL
Abstract
The LEGEND (Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay) experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay using high-purity germanium detectors enriched in ⁷⁶Ge. These detectors are operated within a liquid argon (LAr) cryostat, which provides both passive and active shielding from environmental backgrounds. LAr scintillates in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) range and is susceptible to cosmogenic activation, producing background isotopes such as ⁴²K. This creates surface-level background events in the detectors and necessitates precise modeling of optical photon transport for effective background tagging and vetoing.
To simulate LEGEND, Remage has been developed as a modern GEANT4-based framework for low-background physics experiments. It models detailed detector geometries and simulates the transport of optical photons and charged particles. However, large-scale photon tracking in GEANT4 is computationally inefficient. Recent advances in GPU computing, particularly the availability of dedicated hardware ray tracing cores in modern GPUs, can be leveraged to accelerate optical simulations by speeding up bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) traversal and ray-surface intersection calculations.
This contribution presents ongoing efforts to integrate GPU-accelerated ray tracing into the Remage framework. This includes benchmarking performance, validating optical transport models, and incorporating data from the optical fiber calibration system. These developments aim to improve the efficiency and accuracy of optical simulations, enhancing the experiment’s ability to suppress backgrounds and reach its sensitivity goals.
To simulate LEGEND, Remage has been developed as a modern GEANT4-based framework for low-background physics experiments. It models detailed detector geometries and simulates the transport of optical photons and charged particles. However, large-scale photon tracking in GEANT4 is computationally inefficient. Recent advances in GPU computing, particularly the availability of dedicated hardware ray tracing cores in modern GPUs, can be leveraged to accelerate optical simulations by speeding up bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) traversal and ray-surface intersection calculations.
This contribution presents ongoing efforts to integrate GPU-accelerated ray tracing into the Remage framework. This includes benchmarking performance, validating optical transport models, and incorporating data from the optical fiber calibration system. These developments aim to improve the efficiency and accuracy of optical simulations, enhancing the experiment’s ability to suppress backgrounds and reach its sensitivity goals.
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Presenters
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Maninder Singh
- Max Planck Institute for Physics