Branching exponential flights: travelled lengths and collision statistics

DOI10.1088/1751-8113/45/42/425002MaRDI QIDQ4649404zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Andrea Zoia, E. Dumonteil, Alain Mazzolo, Sameh Mohamed

Publication date 22 November 2012

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1877

zbMATH Keywords

nuclear reactor physicsexponential flightsFeynman-Kac algorithmsGalton-Watson birth-death mechanism

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Stochastic partial differential equations (aspects of stochastic analysis) (60H15) Random walks, random surfaces, lattice animals, etc. in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B41) Branching processes (Galton-Watson, birth-and-death, etc.) (60J80) PDEs in connection with statistical mechanics (35Q82) Stochastic methods (Fokker-Planck, Langevin, etc.) applied to problems in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C31) Nuclear reactor theory; neutron transport (82D75)

Abstract: The evolution of several physical and biological systems, ranging from neutron transport in multiplying media to epidemics or population dynamics, can be described in terms of branching exponential flights, a stochastic process which couples a Galton-Watson birth-death mechanism with random spatial displacements. Within this context, one is often called to assess the length $el{l}_V$ that the process travels in a given region $V$ of the phase space, or the number of visits $n_V$ to this same region. In this paper, we address this issue by resorting to the Feynman-Kac formalism, which allows characterizing the full distribution of $el{l}_V$ and $n_V$ and in particular deriving explicit moment formulas. Some other significant physical observables associated to $el{l}_V$ and $n_V$, such as the survival probability, are discussed as well, and results are illustrated by revisiting the classical example of the rod model in nuclear reactor physics.

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(2)

• The critical catastrophe revisited
• Cauchy's formulas for random walks in bounded domains

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