Development of a new Geant4-DNA electron elastic scattering model for liquid-phase water using the ELSEPA code

This paper presents the calculation of new elastic scattering cross sections for the simulation of electron interactions in liquid water. The calculations are based on the "ELastic Scattering of Electrons and Positrons by neutral Atoms" code, which adopts a Dirac partial wave analysis. A Muffin-tin potential was used in order to account for the liquid-phase of water, and the optical parameters of the correlation-polarization and the inelastic absorption potentials were optimized against vapour-phase water data. The differential and total elastic scattering cross sections calculated in the present work show a global agreement with the experimental data. The impact of these elastic scattering cross sections on the transport of electrons in liquid water was evaluated by track-structure simulations of range, dose-point-kernel, microdosimetric spectra, and ionization clustering using the Geant4-DNA simulation toolkit. The results are compared against those obtained with the elastic scattering models already available in Geant4-DNA and are discussed.