arXiv subjects

Emma Horton

Publications and source records attributed to Emma Horton.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Stochastic Methods for the Neutron Transport Equation I: Linear Semigroup asymptotics

The Neutron Transport Equation (NTE) describes the flux of neutrons through an inhomogeneous fissile medium. In this paper, we reconnect the NTE to the physical model of the spatial Markov branching process which describes the process of nuclear fission, transport, scattering, and absorption. By reformulating the NTE in its mild form and identifying its solution as an expectation semigroup, we use modern techniques to develop a Perron-Frobenius (PF) type decomposition, showing that growth is dominated by a leading eigenfunction and its associated left and right eigenfunctions. In the spirit of results for spatial branching and fragmentation processes, we use our PF decomposition to show the existence of an intrinsic martingale and associated spine decomposition. Moreover, we show how criticality in the PF decomposition dictates the convergence of the intrinsic martingale. The mathematical difficulties in this context come about through unusual piecewise linear motion of particles coupled with an infinite type-space which is taken as neutron velocity. The fundamental nature of our PF decomposition also plays out in accompanying work [20, 9].

math.PR↗

arXiv2020

Stochastic Methods for the Neutron Transport Equation II: Almost sure growth

The neutron transport equation (NTE) describes the flux of neutrons across a planar cross-section in an inhomogeneous fissile medium when the process of nuclear fission is active. Classical work on the NTE emerges from the applied mathematics literature in the 1950s through the work of R. Dautray and collaborators, [7, 8, 19]. The NTE also has a probabilistic representation through the semigroup of the underlying physical process when envisaged as a stochastic process; cf. [7, 17, 18, 20]. More recently, [6] and [16] have continued the probabilistic analysis of the NTE, introducing more recent ideas from the theory of spatial branching processes and quasi-stationary distributions. In this paper, we continue in the same vein and look at a fundamental description of stochastic growth in the supercritical regime. Our main result provides a significant improvement on the last known contribution to growth properties of the physical process in [20], bringing neutron transport theory in line with modern branching process theory such as [14, 12].

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Multi-species neutron transport equation

The Neutron Transport Equation (NTE) describes the flux of neutrons through inhomogeneous fissile medium. Whilst well treated in the nuclear physics literature (cf. [9, 27]), the NTE has had a somewhat scattered treatment in mathematical literature with a variety of different approaches (cf. [8, 25]). Within a probabilistic framework it has somewhat undeservingly received little attention in recent years; nonetheless, probabilistic treatments can be found see for example [19, 26, 24, 29, 4, 3]. In this article our aim is threefold. First we want to introduce a slightly more general setting for the NTE, which gives a more complete picture of the different species of particle and radioactive fluxes that are involved in fission. Second we consolidate the classical c0-semigroup approach to solving the NTE with the method of stochastic representation which involves expectation semigroups. Third we provide the leading asymptotic of our multi-species NTE, which will turn out to be crucial for further stochastic analysis of the NTE in forthcoming work [6, 5]. The methodology used in this paper harmonises the culture of expectation semigroup analysis from the theory of stochastic processes against c0-semigroup theory from functional analysis. In this respect, our presentation is thus part review of existing theory and part presentation of new research results based on generalisation of existing results.

math.PR↗