We have developed a non-sequential ray-tracing simulation library, ROOT-based
simulator for ray tracing (ROBAST), which is aimed to be widely used in optical
simulations of cosmic-ray (CR) and gamma-ray telescopes. The library is written
in C++, and fully utilizes the geometry library of the ROOT framework. Despite
the importance of optics simulations in CR experiments, no open-source software
for ray-tracing simulations that can be widely used in the community has
existed. To reduce the dispensable effort needed to develop multiple
ray-tracing simulators by different research groups, we have successfully used
ROBAST for many years to perform optics simulations for the Cherenkov Telescope
Array (CTA). Among the six proposed telescope designs for CTA, ROBAST is
currently used for three telescopes: a Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) medium-sized
telescope, one of SC small-sized telescopes, and a large-sized telescope (LST).
ROBAST is also used for the simulation and development of hexagonal light
concentrators proposed for the LST focal plane. Making full use of the ROOT
geometry library with additional ROBAST classes, we are able to build the
complex optics geometries typically used in CR experiments and ground-based
gamma-ray telescopes. We introduce ROBAST and its features developed for CR
experiments, and show several successful applications for CTA.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics. 11 pages, 10
figures, 4 table
