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.
Learning latent variable models with stochastic variational inference is challenging when the approximate posterior is far from the true posterior, due to high variance in the gradient estimates. We propose a novel rejection sampling step that discards samples from the variational posterior which are assigned low likelihoods by the model. Our approach provides an arbitrarily accurate approximation of the true posterior at the expense of extra computation. Using a new gradient estimator for the resulting unnormalized proposal distribution, we achieve average improvements of 3.71 nats and 0.21 nats over state-of-the-art single-sample and multi-sample alternatives respectively for estimating marginal log-likelihoods using sigmoid belief networks on the MNIST dataset.
Monte Carlo (MC) methods have become very popular in signal processing during the past decades. The adaptive rejection sampling (ARS) algorithms are well-known MC technique which draw efficiently independent samples from univariate target densities. The ARS schemes yield a sequence of proposal functions that converge toward the target, so that the probability of accepting a sample approaches one. However, sampling from the proposal pdf becomes more computationally demanding each time it is updated. We propose the Parsimonious Adaptive Rejection Sampling (PARS) method, where an efficient trade-off between acceptance rate and proposal complexity is obtained. Thus, the resulting algorithm is faster than the standard ARS approach.
Magnetic molecules, modelled as finite-size spin systems, are test-beds for quantum phenomena and could constitute key elements in future spintronics devices, long-lasting nanoscale memories or noise-resilient quantum computing platforms. Inelastic neutron scattering is the technique of choice to probe them, characterizing molecular eigenstates on atomic scales. However, although large magnetic molecules can be controllably synthesized, simulating their dynamics and interpreting spectroscopic measurements is challenging because of the exponential scaling of the required resources on a classical computer. Here, we show that quantum computers have the potential to efficiently extract dynamical correlations and the associated magnetic neutron cross-section by simulating prototypical spin systems on a quantum hardware. We identify the main gate errors and show the potential scalability of our approach. The synergy between developments in neutron scattering and quantum processors will help design spin clusters for future applications.
Spin waves in the the rare earth orthorferrite YFeO$_3$ have been studied by inelastic neutron scattering and analyzed with a full four-sublattice model including contributions from both the weak ferromagnetic and hidden antiferromagnetic orders. Antiferromagnetic (AFM) exchange interactions of $J_1 = -4.23 pm 0.08$ (nearest-neighbors only) or $J_1 = -4.77 pm 0.08$ meV and $J_2 = -0.21 pm 0.04$ meV lead to excellent fits for most branches at both low and high energies. An additional branch associated with the hidden antiferromagnetic order was observed. This work paves the way for studies of other materials in this class containing spin reorientation transitions and magnetic rare earth ions.
For the first time an analytic expression was obtained for the inelastic neutron scattering law with an isotropic neutron source within the gas model, considering moderating medium temperature as a parameter. The inelastic scattering law is obtained, based on the solution of the kinematic problem of neutron inelastic scattering on a nucleus in laboratory coordinate system (L-system) in general case. I.e. in case not only a neutron but also a nucleus have arbitrary velocity vector in L-system. Analytic expressions are found for the neutron flux density and moderation spectrum in reactor fissile medium, both in case of the elastic scattering law, obtained earlier by the authors, and in case of the inelastic scattering law obtained in this paper. Both elastic and inelastic scattering laws are considered to be dependent on the medium temperature. The obtained expressions for neutron moderation spectra enable reinterpretation of physical nature of the processes that determine the shape of neutron spectrum in a wide energy range.