Improvement of the symbolic Monte-Carlo method for the transport equation: P1 extension and coupling with diffusion

We use asymptotic analysis to study the diffusion limit of the Symbolic Implicit Monte-Carlo (SIMC) method for the transport equation. For standard SIMC with piecewise constant basis functions, we demonstrate mathematically that the solution converges to the solution of a wrong diffusion equation. Nevertheless a simple extension to piecewise linear basis functions enables to obtain the correct solution. This improvement allows the calculation in opaque medium on a mesh resolving the diffusion scale much larger than the transport scale. Anyway, the huge number of particles which is necessary to get a correct answer makes this computation time consuming. Thus, we have derived from this asymptotic study an hybrid method coupling deterministic calculation in the opaque medium and Monte-Carlo calculation in the transparent medium. This method gives exactly the same results as the previous one but at a much lower price. We present numerical examples which illustrate the analysis. (authors)