Verification of high-energy transport codes on the basis of activation data

Nuclide production cross sections measured at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) for the targets of natCr, 56Fe, natNi, 93Nb, 181Ta, natW, natPb, and 209Bi irradiated by protons with energies from 40 to 2600 MeV were used to estimate the predictive accuracy of several popular high-energy transport codes. A general agreement of the ITEP data with the data obtained by other groups, including the numerous GSI data measured by the inverse kinematics method was found. Simulations of the measured data were performed with the mcnpx (bertini and isabel options), cem03.02, incl4.2+abla, incl4.5+abla07, phits, and cascade.07 codes. Deviation factors between the calculated and experimental cross sections have been estimated for each target and for the whole energy range covered by our measurements. Two-dimensional diagrams of deviation factor values were produced for estimating the predictive power of every code for intermediate, not measured masses of nuclei targets and bombarding energies of protons. Further improvements of all tested here codes are recommended. In addition, new measurements at ITEP of nuclide yields from the 208Pb target irradiated by 500-MeV protons are presented. A good agreement between these new data and the GSI measurements obtained by the inverse kinematics method was found. © 2011 American Physical Society.