For ten days at the end of September, 1987, a group of about 75 scientists from 21 different countries gathered in a restored monastery on a 750 meter high piece of rock jutting out of the Mediterranean Sea to discuss the simulation of the transport of electrons and photons using Monte Carlo techniques. When we first had the idea for this meeting, Ralph Nelson, who had organized a previous course at the "Ettore Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture, suggested that Erice would be the ideal place for such a meeting. Nahum, Nelson and Rogers became Co-Directors of the Course, with the help of Alessandro Rindi, the Director of the School of Radiation Damage and Protection, and Professor Antonino Zichichi, Director of the "Ettore Majorana" Centre. The course was an outstanding success, both scientifically and socially, and those at the meeting will carry the marks of having attended, both intellectually and on a personal level where many friendships were made. The scientific content of the course was at a very high caliber, both because of the hard work done by all the lecturers in preparing their lectures (e. g. , complete copies of each lecture were available at the beginning of the course) and because of the high quality of the "students", many of whom were accomplished experts in the field. The outstanding facilities of the Centre contributed greatly to the success. This volume contains the formal record of the course lectures.

This book focuses on the state of the art of Monte Carlo methods in radiation physics and particle transport simulation and applications. Special attention is paid to algorithm development for modeling, and the analysis of experiments and measurements in a variety of fields.

With this book we try to reach several more-or-less unattainable goals namely: To compromise in a single book all the most important achievements of Monte Carlo calculations for solving neutron and photon transport problems. To present a book which discusses the same topics in the three levels known from the literature and gives us useful information for both beginners and experienced readers. It lists both well-established old techniques and also newest findings.

The energy at which electrons and positrons radiate bremsstrahlung photons and their average energy loss when traveling a known distance in a material are derived in Monte Carlo transport studies by solving integral equations. Iterative procedures which use Newton's Method for finding the zero of a function are applied here to efficiently calculate these zeroes. The answers are generally calculated to a high accuracy after four or five iterations. Example calculations are provided and the results are discussed. (Author).

About ten years after the first edition comes this second edition of Monte Carlo Techniques in Radiation Therapy: Introduction, Source Modelling, and Patient Dose Calculations, thoroughly updated and extended with the latest topics, edited by Frank Verhaegen and Joao Seco. This book aims to provide a brief introduction to the history and basics of Monte Carlo simulation, but again has a strong focus on applications in radiotherapy. Since the first edition, Monte Carlo simulation has found many new applications, which are included in detail. The applications sections in this book cover the following: Modelling transport of photons, electrons, protons, and ions Modelling radiation sources for external beam radiotherapy Modelling radiation sources for brachytherapy Design of radiation sources Modelling dynamic beam delivery Patient dose calculations in external beam radiotherapy Patient dose calculations in brachytherapy Use of artificial intelligence in Monte Carlo simulations This book is intended for both students and professionals, both novice and experienced, in medical radiotherapy physics. It combines overviews of development, methods, and references to facilitate Monte Carlo studies.

A review of nonplasma coupled electron/photon transport using Monte Carlo method is presented. Remarks are mainly restricted to linerarized formalisms at electron energies from 1 keV to 1000 MeV. Applications involving pulse-height estimation, transport in external magnetic fields, and optical Cerenkov production are discussed to underscore the importance of this branch of computational physics. Advances in electron multigroup cross-section generation is reported, and its impact on future code development assessed. Progress toward the transformation of MCNP into a generalized neutral/charged-particle Monte Carlo code is described. 48 refs.

A general adjoint coupled electron-photon Monte Carlo code for solving the Boltzmann-Fokker-Planck equation has recently been created. It is a modified version of ITS 3.0, a coupled electronphoton Monte Carlo code that has world-wide distribution. The applicability of the new code to radiation-interaction problems of the type found in space environments is demonstrated.