Hadronic shower models in GEANT4: validation strategy and results

Optimal exploitation of hadronic final states played a key role in successes of all recent hadron collider experiment in HEP, and the ability to use hadronic final states will continue to be one of the decisive issues during the analysis phase of the LHC experiments. Monte Carlo implementations of hadronic shower models provided with GEANT4 facilitate the use of hadronic final states, and have been developed for many years. The authors will give an overview on the physics underlying hadronic shower simulation, discussion the three basic types of modelling; data driven, parametrisation driven, and theory driven modelling, and their respective implementation status in GEANT4. The authors will confront the different types of modelling with a validation suite for hadronic generators based on cross-sections measurements from thin target experiments, and expose the strength and weaknesses of the individual approaches