NEST: Noble Element Simulation Technique

NEST (Noble Element Simulation Technique) offers comprehensive, accurate, and precise simulation of the excitation, ionization, and corresponding scintillation and electroluminescence processes in liquid noble elements, useful for direct dark matter detectors, double beta decay searches, PET scans, and general radiation detection technology. Written in C++, NEST is an add-on module for the Geant4 simulation package that incorporates more detailed physics than is currently available into the simulation of scintillation. NEST is of particular use for low-energy nuclear recoils. All available liquid xenon data on nuclear recoils and electron recoils to date have been taken into consideration in arriving at the current models. NEST also handles the magnitude of the light and charge yields of nuclear recoils, including their electric field dependence, thereby shedding light on the possibility of detection or exclusion of a low-mass dark matter WIMP by liquid xenon detectors.