Validation of the Geant4 electromagnetic photon cross-sections for elements and compounds

The Geant4 toolkit provides a wide set of alternative models to describe the electromagnetic interaction of photons with matter. The photon cross-sections that are used by the Geant4 electromagnetic models have been compared to external reference libraries (NIST, EPDL97, SANDIA) for several elements and compounds. The agreement of the Geant4 cross-section with the reference data has been quantified by means of statistical analysis. In particular, the cross-sections of all the Geant4 photon models are in statistical agreement with the NIST database, with the exception of Rayleigh scattering. A critical discussion is presented for those cases where a disagreement is found. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.