Neutron counting statistics in a subcritical cyclostationary multiplying system: II. Sinusoidally modulated neutron source

Abstract

This paper is the second of two dealing with the neutron counting statistics in a subcritical cyclostationary multiplying system fed by a time dependent neutron source, explicitly taking into account the delayed neutrons. The general expressions for the mean value, variance and covariance of the counts, previously obtained in the realm of the theory of branching stochastic processes, are herein specialized to the case of a sinusoidal source. By means of these expressions the estimation of the kinetic parameters of the medium can be performed in a sinusoidally modulated neutron source experiment taking into account the proper complete correlation matrix. Numerical results are reported.A FORTRAN IV program is available for computing the count moment in the case of the pulsed neutron source, dealt with in the first part, and for a sinusoidal source in the present case.