Verification Test System for the Atomic Data Libraries Used by Monte Carlo Simulation Codes

The evaluated atomic data libraries (EADL, EEDL and EPDL) are used by several major Monte Carlo codes, including Geant4 and MCNP, as the foundation to model electron and photon interactions with matter. Recent releases of these data libraries exhibited serious deficiencies in the consistency and reliability of their content, which hints to the lack of adequate verification testing prior to their distribution. We report the design and initial development of a verification test system specifically tailored to these data libraries, which is meant to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents; it is intended to be introduced into a continuous integration system to ensure the consistency and reliability of future releases. The development adopts various complementary modeling methods and technolo- gies, some of which, to the best of our knowledge, are used for the first time in the environment of particle and nuclear physics. We present an overview of the development and of the software engineering technologies that support it, and we illustrate some initial application results.