Error modes in implicit Monte Carlo
- Forrest B.
The Implicit Monte Carlo (IMC) method of Fleck and Cummings [1] has been used for years to analyze radiative transfer problems, such as those encountered in stellar atmospheres or inertial confinement fusion. Larsen and Mercier [2] have shown that the IMC method violates a maximum principle that is satisfied by the exact solution to the radiative transfer equation. Except for [2] and related papers regarding the maximum principle, there have been no other published results regarding the analysis of errors or convergence properties for the IMC method. This work presents an exact error analysis for the IMC method by using the analytical solutions for infinite medium geometry (0-D) to determine closed form expressions for the errors. The goal is to gain insight regarding the errors inherent in the IMC method by relating the exact 0-D errors to multi-dimensional geometry. Additional work (not described herein) has shown that adding a leakage term (i.e., a 'buckling' term) to the 0-D equations has relatively little effect on the IMC errors analyzed in this paper, so that the 0-D errors should provide useful guidance for the errors observed in multi-dimensional simulations.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE
- OSTI ID:
- 975630
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-01-3755
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Four decades of implicit Monte Carlo
Analysis of a Monte Carlo method for nonlinear radiative transfer