Most electron beam physics is considered in the context of a vacuum, but there are applications to long-range electron beam transmission in air. As particle acceleration sources become more compact, we may have the chance to take particle beams out to the real world. The example provided in the paper describes that of x-ray backscatter detectors, where significantly stronger signals could be achieved by scanning objects with electron beams. This paper forms the basis for a potential new mode of particle-beam research, and it is important to ensure the reproducibility of this work for groups who wish to explore the applications of this new technology.
The direct numerical simulations (DNS) for this paper were conducted using Basilisk (http://basilisk.fr/). As Basilisk is a free software program written in C, it can be readily installed on any Linux machine, and it should be straightforward to then run the driver code to re-produce the DNS from this paper. Given this, the numerical solutions presented in this paper are a result of many high-fidelity simulations, which each took approximately 24 CPU hours running between 4 to 8 cores. Hence the difficulty in reproducing the results should mainly be in the amount of computational resources it would take, so HPC resources will be required. The DNS in this paper were used to validate the presented analytical solutions, as well as extend the results to a longer timescale. Reproducing these numerical results will build confidence in these results, ensuring that they are independent of the system architecture they were produced on.
This paper presents a fine example of high-throughput computational materials screening studies, mainly focusing on the carbon nanoclusters of different sizes. In the paper, a set of diverse empirical and machine-learned interatomic potentials, which are commonly used to simulate carbonaceous materials, is benchmarked against the higher-level density functional theory (DFT) data, using a range of diverse structural features as the comparison criteria. Trying to reproduce the data presented here (even if you only consider a subset of the interaction potentials) will help you devise an understanding as to how you could approach a high-throughput structure prediction problem. Even though we concentrate here on isolated/finite nanoclusters, AIRSS (and other similar approaches like USPEX, CALYPSO, GMIN, etc.,) can also be used to predict crystal structures of different class of materials with applications in energy storage, catalysis, hydrogen storage, and so on.
Systematically improvable machine learning potentials could have a significant impact on the range of properties that can be modelled, but the toolchain associated with using them presents a barrier to entry for new users. Attempting to reproduce some of our results will help us improve the accessibility of the approach.
Popular descriptors for machine learning potentials such as the Behler-Parinello atom centred symmetry functions (ACSF) or the Smooth Overlap of Interatomic Potentials (SOAP) are widely used but so far not much attention has been paid to optimising how many descriptor components need to be included to give good results.
There are many applications to multi-MeV X-rays. Their penetrative properties make them good for scanning dense objects for industry, and their ionising properties can destroy tumours in radiotherapy. They are also around the energy of nuclear transitions, so they can trigger nuclear reactions to break down nuclear waste into medical isotopes, or to reveal smuggled nuclear-materials for port security. Laser-driven X-ray generation offers a compact and efficient way to create a bright source of X-rays, without having to construct a large synchrotron. To fully utilise this capability, work on optimising the target design and understanding the underlying X-ray mechanisms are essential. The hybrid-PIC code is in a unique position to model the full interaction, so its ease-of-use and reproducibility are crucial for this field to develop.
Even though the approach in the paper focuses on a specific measurement (clumped isotopes) and how to optimize which and how many standards we use, I hope that the problem is general enough that insight can translate to any kind of measurement that relies on machine calibration. I've committed to writing a literate program (plain text interspersed with code chunks) to explain what is going on and to make the simulations one step at a time. I really hope that this is understandable to future collaborators and scientists in my field, but I have not had any code review internally and I also didn't receive any feedback on it from the reviewers. I would love to see if what in my mind represents "reproducible code" is actually reproducible, and to learn what I can improve for future projects!