Rejection-based sampling of inelastic neutron scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rejection sampling method for accurately and efficiently generating inelastic neutron scattering distributions, compatible with various isotropic materials and benchmarks against analytical models and neutron transport codes.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel rejection sampling technique that produces continuous neutron distributions with minimal interpolation, improving computational efficiency and accuracy in neutron scattering simulations.

Findings

Method achieves high accuracy compared to analytical models

Produces continuous energy and angular distributions

Demonstrates efficiency with single interpolation per sample

Abstract

Distributions of inelastically scattered neutrons can be quantum dynamically described by a scattering kernel. We present an accurate and computationally efficient rejection method for sampling a given scattering kernel of any isotropic material. The proposed method produces continuous neutron energy and angular distributions, typically using just a single interpolation per sampling. We benchmark the results of this method against those from accurate analytical models and one of the major neutron transport codes. We also show the results of applying this method to the conventional discrete double differential cross sections.