TALYS-2.2 - Simulation of nuclear reactions

a PhD in the Natural Sciences on Multi-step direct reactions at the Univ. of Groningen, and a Professorship at the Univ. of Uppsala on theoretical nuclear reactions.Arjan is currently Head of the Nuclear Data Section at the IAEA in Vienna.Before that, he has worked at ECN/NRG Petten, the Netherlands, on nuclear reaction data for science and technology, and as guest scientist at CEA/Bruyères-le-Châtel and Los Alamos National Laboratory on the development and computational implementation of nuclear reaction models.He has led several students to PhD degrees, has coordinated and chaired various international nuclear data projects such as the OECD/NEA JEFF and WPEC projects, and has advised governments and international organisations on nuclear research and development.Among his scientific accomplishments are innovations in nuclear reaction physics, especially for the optical model and pre-equilibrium reactions, and initiating the '3 T's': the TALYS nuclear model code, Total Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation and the TENDL nuclear data library.He has been awarded the Oppenheimer Coin from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Uppsala University.As of 2025, his h-index is 62 with more than 26 000 citations.Although Arjan is currently in a managerial role, he aims to keep his scientific creativity alive by maintaining and extending TALYS plus all software that emerges from that.Pleas from his friends to also spend time on other things are sometimes honoured. PrefaceTALYS is a nuclear reaction program with the objective to provide a complete and accurate simulation of nuclear reactions up to energies of 200 MeV, through an optimal combination of reliable nuclear models, flexibility and user-friendliness.TALYS can be used for the analysis of basic nuclear reaction experiments or to generate nuclear data for applications.The idea to make TALYS was born in 1998, when I was visiting CEA Bruyères-le-Châtel and we decided to implement our combined knowledge of nuclear reactions into one single software package.Since then, virtually all TALYS development has taken place at NRG Petten, the Netherlands, CEA Bruyères-le-Châtel, France, University Libre, Brussels, and in recent years at the IAEA in Vienna.After 20 years, thousands of users, and more than 7000 publications in which TALYS is used, I found it time to produce an entirely new version of the code, rewritten in Fortran-95, and start the TALYS-2 series.TALYS-1.97, the equivalent of TALYS-2.0, was the last version of the TALYS-1.xseries, released in 2023, and since then we only continue development of the TALYS-2 series.At the same time, this entirely new tutorial was made available, with a more logical structure than the old TALYS manual.Like most scientific projects, TALYS is always under development.Nevertheless, at certain moments in time, we freeze a well-defined version of TALYS and subject it to extensive verification and validation procedures.You are now reading the tutorial which applies to version 2.2.This part of my work I consider as truly open source: I try to minimize the difference between what I know and what I provide to others.At the start of my career, that meant releasing all knowledge in publications.Nowadays, that means releasing all knowledge in publications and in software, if possible quality-assured, retraceable and user-friendly.I aim to do that and I have spent a significant amount of my available time recycling software of myself and others, and this tutorial, to produce something that is hopefully sustainable.As a PhD student, and also later, I worked myself through theory books of authors like Hans Weidenmüller (my PhD professor), Peter Hodgson (who pushed my early career) and Ray Satchlerand I wondered whether I would once be in the position to write a similar book.It did not happen, other priorities prevailed and being employed for my whole career by research and international organisations instead of a university did not help either (for that particular book that is, for the rest I don't complain).Still, one could read this tutorial as a sort of modern nuclear physics "book".Many essential nuclear models will be discussed, with the extra feature (compared to old-style text books) that they are all accompanied with TALYS sample cases and illustrations. License, contact and referenceAs mentioned on the first page and in the source code, TALYS falls in the category of MIT License software.In addition to the MIT terms I have a request:• When TALYS is used for your reports, publications, etc., please make a proper reference to the code.