Optimisation of the Tripathi model using a nuclear reaction cross-section database

Nuclear reaction cross-sections are an essential ingredient to reliable deterministic and stochastic radiation transport codes used for radiation protection in space and heavy-ion therapy applications. A recent study compared the existing literature data compiled within the open-access GSI-ESA-NASA cross-section database to the models implemented in the transport codes most commonly used for radiation protection in space and heavy-ion therapy applications. The outcome of the comparison was that none of the models fit well the experimental data for all projectile-target systems at all energy ranges. Therefore, the literature data were exploited to optimise the Tripathi-Cucinotta-Wilson model as reported in this work. This model is used as default in FLUKA, TRiP, and SpaceTRiP, it is part of the hybrid-Kurotama (HK) model used in particle and heavy ion transport code (PHITS), and it is implemented in Geant4. The consequences of using the proposed Tripathi-Cucinotta-Wilson optimisation in the HK model are also analysed.