CORSIKA

Tim Huege

doi:10.5281/zenodo.15525791

CORSIKA

A Monte Carlo framework for the simulation of particle showers initiated in the Earth's atmosphere (or dense media) by high-energy particles from the cosmos.

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DOI:

10.5281/zenodo.15525791

Description

In astroparticle physics, we study high-energy particles arriving from the cosmos at the Earth. These can be charged atomic nuclei (so-called "cosmic rays"), photons, leptons or only weakly-interacting neutrinos. When these particles interact in the Earth's atmosphere or in dense media, they initiate particle cascades that can grow to billions of particles before the so-called "particle shower" is finally absorbed through ionization of the interaction medium.

The simulation of particle showers is a problem of a highly statistical nature, best addressed by a Monte Carlo approach. A very diverse set of processes such as particle interactions, particle propagation and decay need to be treated with high accuracy over a vast parameter space. As these particles can have energies way beyond those reachable by human-made accelerators, also the interaction physics is not fully known, so that a number of different interaction models exist which need to be interchangeable. Electromagnetic emissions from these particle showers, for example optical Cherenkov light or radio waves, can also be calculated in the simulations.

The CORSIKA code, developed and maintained at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has been the work horse for particle-shower simulations in the astroparticle physics community for over 30 years. It is being used by numerous projects aiming at the detection of charged cosmic rays, photons or neutrinos worldwide. Version 7 of the code is based on FORTRAN and is still under active development and maintenance. In parallel, a complete rewrite of the functionality in a modern C++ framework is ongoing and will be released as Version 8 of the code.

Keywords

Astroparticle Physics

Matter

Monte Carlo simulation

Programming languages

Fortran 75%
C++ 15%
Nextflow 7%
C 2%
Python 1%

License

BSD-3-Clause

</>Source code

Participating organisations

Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Reference papers

Mentions

Testimonials

The air shower simulation program CORSIKA is crucial for the planning, construction, operation and success of the Cherenkov Telescope Observatory (CTAO).

– Dr. Roberta Zanin, CTAO Project Scientist

CORSIKA has been a mainstay for the detailed understanding of the physics of high energy extensive air showers for many years, and its wide use in our community has provided clear and compelling synergies with many experimental cosmic ray efforts.

– Prof. Peter W. Gorham, PI of the ANITA experiment and Co-I of the PUEO experiment

CORSIKA has been the tool for simulating air showers for the Pierre Auger Observatory from the very beginning of the project more than 20 years ago. The high quality of the code and the continuous development and maintenance of it have been absolutely fundamental for the success of the Pierre Auger Observatory.

– Prof. Ralph Engel and Dr. Antonella Castellina, Spokespersons of the Pierre Auger Observatory

CORSIKA is since several decades the de-facto standard for air shower simulations in the field.

– Prof. Jörg Hörandel, Leader of the Global Cosmic Ray Observatory (GCOS) consortium

The CORSIKA project has served as a bright and reliable beacon in the rough seas of the cosmic ray field.

– Prof. Charles Jui, Telescope Array Collaboration

As a member of the astroparticle physics community and elected spokesperson of the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), I can attest to the vital role that CORSIKA plays in our research.

– Prof. Elisa Resconi, Spokesperson of the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE)

From the beginning of the project, we have relied exclusively on CORSIKA for our air-shower simulations, as the de facto standard in our field.

– Prof. Jim Hinton, Spokesperson of the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO)

The HAWC collaboration has always been an intense user of the existing CORSIKA 7 simulation program to generate the simulated gamma and hadron showers in our simulation and analysis chain.

– Prof. Alberto Carramiñana and Prof. Ke Fang, spokespersons of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC)

IceCube-Gen2 strongly relies on precise simulations of particle showers for its research. In particular, the background to the detection of high-energy neutrinos posed by muons and muon neutrinos arising from extensive air showers needs to be determined accurately, for which simulations with CORSIKA 7 are being used extensively.

– Prof. Marek Kowalski, Chair of the IceCube-Gen2 Coordination Committee

Using CORSIKA allows for various systematic uncertainty studies related to the atmospheric density, the magnetic field, the hadronic interaction models, and the primary flux itself.

– Prof. Paschal Coyle, Spokesperson of KM3NeT

With of the order of 100,000 CPU hours expended per year, the simulations generated by the CORSIKA software package form the fundamental basis for the analysis of the recorded data, and thus MAGIC’s scientific productivity.

– Prof. David Paneque, Spokesperson of the MAGIC Collaboration

CORSIKA, as a general, reliable and widely applied tool for EAS simulation, is heavily used in LHAASO experiment for its design and data analysis.

– Prof. Zhen Cao, Spokesperson of the LHAASO Collaboration

CORSIKA has been one of the most important work horses in the field of air shower physics for decades.

– Prof. Anna Nelles and Prof. Stijn Buitink, Chairs of the SKA Science Working Group on High-Energy Cosmic Particles

Air showers and their remnants as entering the ice are an important background signal for our detector. We have been relying and will rely heavily on CORSIKA simulations.

– Prof. Nick van Eijndhoven and Prof. Anna Nelles, for the Radio Neutrino Observatory Greenland (RNO-G) Collaboration

Accurate and detailed air-shower simulations are required for the calculation of the instrument response of VERITAS. The CORSIKA code has been used for many years for this task and it has been (and will be) absolutely crucial for every single scientific result of the VERITAS Collaboration.

– Prof. David Kieda and Prof. Amy Furniss, Chair of VERITAS Executive Committee and Spokesperson of the VERITAS Collaboration