Variance-reduction methods for Monte Carlo simulation of radiation transport

After a brief description of the essentials of Monte Carlo simulation methods and the definition of simulation efficiency, the rationale for variance-reduction techniques is presented. Popular variance-reduction techniques applicable to Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport are described an...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: García-Pareja, Salvador, Lallena, Antonio M., Salvat Gavaldà, Francesc
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2021
Country:España
Institution:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repository:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:2445/194997
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/194997
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Mètode de Montecarlo
Radiació
Partícules (Matèria)
Monte Carlo method
Radiation
Particles
Description
Summary:After a brief description of the essentials of Monte Carlo simulation methods and the definition of simulation efficiency, the rationale for variance-reduction techniques is presented. Popular variance-reduction techniques applicable to Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport are described and motivated. The focus is on those techniques that can be used with any transport code, irrespective of the strategies used to track charged particles; they operate by manipulating either the number and weights of the transported particles or the mean free paths of the various interaction mechanisms. The considered techniques are 1) splitting and Russian roulette, with the ant colony method as builder of importance maps, 2) exponential transform and interaction-forcing biasing, 3) Woodcock or delta-scattering method, 4) interaction forcing, and 5) proper use of symmetries and combinations of different techniques. Illustrative results from analog simulations (without recourse to variance-reduction) and from variance-reduced simulations of various transport problems are presented.