Universal properties of branching random walks in confined geometries

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that simple Cauchy-like formulas for occupation statistics in branching random walks extend from exponential jumps to arbitrary jumps under isotropic scattering and finite average jump size, broadening their applicability.

Contribution

It generalizes known formulas for branching Pearson random walks to a wider class with arbitrary jumps, under specific scattering conditions.

Findings

Cauchy-like formulas apply to broader branching processes

Formulas hold for arbitrary jumps with isotropic scattering

Results are relevant for confined geometries in nuclear and medical contexts

Abstract

Characterizing the occupation statistics of a radiation flow through confined geometries is key to such technological issues as nuclear reactor design and medical diagnosis. This amounts to assessing the distribution of the travelled length $\ell$ and the number of collisions $n$ performed by the underlying stochastic transport process, for which remarkably simple Cauchy-like formulas were established in the case of branching Pearson random walks with exponentially distributed jumps. In this Letter, we show that such formulas strikingly carry over to the much broader class of branching processes with arbitrary jumps, provided that scattering is isotropic and the average jump size is finite.