This paper deals with the numerical
evaluation of fundamental- and higher-mode solutions of the
well-known K-eigenvalue problem in nuclear reactor physics using
neutron transport theory. If the spatial domain has a plane of
reflective symmetry, it is customary to find the fundamental
K-mode by considering only the half-domain on one side of the
plane for the calculation and applying a reflective boundary
condition (RBC) on the plane of symmetry. Here, it is shown that
the higher antisymmetric K-mode can also be evaluated in a
similar way by applying what is called here the anti-RBC (ARBC)
on the plane of symmetry. ARBC was implemented in computer codes
based on the discrete ordinates method in Cartesian geometry for
some sample problems and was found to work well. The
implementation of ARBC in existing codes, although very easy,
does not seem to be widely used or reported in the literature.
For a one-dimensional homogeneous slab with isotropic
scattering, the first antisymmetric K-mode found using ARBC is
equivalent to the fundamental mode of a sphere, apart from a
scaling factor for the total flux. An interesting result is that
the fundamental mode of a sphere computed in this way does not
contain the unphysical flux dip near the center, commonly
obtained by the discrete ordinates codes in spherical geometry.
Although not shown here, it appears that ARBC can be implemented
in Monte Carlo codes also to find antisymmetric modes.
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