page_title: Geant4
section_title: Applications outside high energy physics
hierarchical_section_title: Geant4 / Applications outside high energy physics
caption_attribution_description: English: Monte Carlo simulation of runaway relativistic electron avalanche (RREA) in air. Electrons are shown in black, photons in blue, and positrons in red. The electric field is directed downwards and is only nonzero in the 100-meter thick plane between the two lines.
context_page_description: Geant4 is a platform for "the simulation of the passage of particles through matter" using Monte Carlo methods. It is the successor of the GEANT series of software toolkits developed by The Geant4 collaboration, and the first to use object oriented programming. Its development, maintenance and user support are taken care by the international Geant4 Collaboration. Application areas include high energy physics and nuclear experiments, medical, accelerator and space physics studies. The software is used by a number of research projects around the world.
  The Geant4 software and source code is freely available from the project web site; until version 8.1, no specific software license for its use existed; Geant4 is now provided under the Geant4 Software License.
context_section_description: Because of its general purpose nature, Geant4 is well suited for development of computational tools for analysing interactions of particle with matter in many areas. These include:
  Space applications where it is used to study interactions between the natural space radiation environment and space hardware or astronauts;
  Medical applications where interactions of radiations used for treatment are simulated.
  Radiation effects in microelectronics where ionizing effects on semiconductor devices are modeled.
  Nuclear physics
caption: GEANT4 simulation of relativistic electron avalanche driven by an electric field in air as might occur in thunderstorms and lightning.
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