This document contains information on the Monte Carlo neutron ray-tracing program McStas version 3.8.6, building on the initial release in October 1998 of version 1.0 as presented in Ref. [LN99] and further developed though version 2.0 as presented in Ref. [Wil+14]. The reader of this document is supposed to have some knowledge of neutron scattering, whereas only little knowledge about simulation techniques is required. In a few places, we also assume familiarity with the use of the C programming language and UNIX/Linux.
If you don’t want to read this manual in full, go directly to the brief introduction in chapter 3.2.
It is a pleasure to thank Prof. Kurt N. Clausen, PSI, for his continuous support to this project and for having initiated McStas in the first place. Essential support has also been given by Prof. Robert McGreevy, ISIS. We have also benefited from discussions with many other people in the neutron scattering community, too numerous to mention here.
In case of errors, questions, or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact the authors at mcstas-users@mcstas.org or consult the McStas home page [Mcs]. A special bug/request reporting service is available [Git].
If you appreciate this software, please subscribe to the mcstas-users@mcstas.org email list, send us a smiley message, and contribute to the package. We also encourage you to refer to this software when publishing results, with the following citations:
P. Willendrup, and K. Lefmann, Journal of Neutron Research, 23 (2021) 7-27.
P. Willendrup, and K. Lefmann, Journal of Neutron Research, 22, (2020) 1-16.
P. Willendrup, E. Farhi, E. Knudsen, U. Filges and K. Lefmann, Journal of Neutron Research, 17 (2014) 35.
P. Willendrup, E. Farhi and K. Lefmann, Physica B, 350 (2004) 735.
K. Lefmann and K. Nielsen, Neutron News 10/3, 20, (1999).
The McStas project has been supported by the European Union through“XENNI / Cool Neutrons” (FP4), “SCANS” (FP5), “nmi3/MCNSI” (FP6), “‘nmi3-ii/E-learning” and “nmi3-ii/MCNSI7” (FP7) [Nmi; Mcn]. McStas was supported directly from the construction project for the ISIS second target station (TS2/EU), see [Ts2]. Currently McStas is supported through the Danish involvement in the Data Management and Software Center, a subdivision of the European Spallation Source (ESS), see [Ess] and the European Union through “SINE2020/WP3 e-elarning” and and “SINE2020/WP8 e-Tools” (Horizon2020). the home pages [Sin].