Branching exponential flights: travelled lengths and collision statistics

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical framework using the Feynman-Kac formalism to analyze the distribution of traveled lengths and visits in branching exponential flights, with applications to physical and biological systems.

Contribution

It introduces explicit formulas for the full distribution and moments of traveled lengths and visits in branching exponential flights, enhancing understanding of these stochastic processes.

Findings

Derived explicit moment formulas for traveled lengths and visits

Characterized the full distribution of key observables using Feynman-Kac

Applied results to the classical rod model in nuclear physics

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 $\ell_V$ 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 $\ell_V$ and $n_V$ and in particular deriving explicit moment formulas. Some other significant physical observables associated to $\ell_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.