LHAASO-KM2A detector simulation using Geant4

Abstract

KM2A is one of the main sub-arrays of LHAASO, working on gamma ray astronomy and cosmic ray physics at energies above 10 TeV. Detector simulation is the important foundation for estimating detector performance and data analysis. It is a big challenge to simulate the KM2A detector in the framework of Geant4 due to the need to track numerous photons from a large number of detector units (>6000) with large altitude difference (30 m) and huge coverage (1.3 km2). In this paper, the design of the KM2A simulation code G4KM2A based on Geant4 is introduced. The process of G4KM2A is optimized mainly in memory consumption to avoid memory overflow. Some simplifications are used to significantly speed up the execution of G4KM2A. The running time is reduced by at least 30 times compared to full detector simulation. The particle distributions and the core/angle resolution comparison between simulation and experimental data of the full KM2A array are also presented, which show good agreement.