PICA95: An intranuclear-cascade code for 25-MeV to 3.5-GeV photon-induced nuclear reactions

PICA95, an intranuclear-cascade code for calculating photon-induced nuclear reactions for incident photon energies up to 3.5 GeV, is an extension of the original PICA code package that works for incident photon energies up to 400 MeV. The original code includes the quasi-deuteron breakup and single-pion production channels. The extension to an incident photon energy of 3.5 GeV requires the addition of multiple-pion production channels capable of emitting up to five pions. Relativistic phase-space relations are used to conserve energy and momentum in multi-body breakups. Fermi motion of the struck nucleon is included in the phase-space calculations as well as secondary nuclear collisions of the produced particles. Calculated doubly differential cross sections for the productions of protons, neutrons, {pi}{sup +}, {pi}{sup 0}, and {pi}{sup {minus}} for incident photon energies of 500 MeV, 1 GeV, and 2 GeV are compared with predictions by other codes. Due to the sparsity of experimental data, more experiments are needed in order to refine the gamma nuclear collision model.