Originally designed as a new nuclear reactor monitoring device, the Nucifer detector has successfully detected its first neutrinos. We provide the second-shortest baseline measurement of the reactor neutrino flux. The detection of electron antineutrinos emitted in the decay chains of the fission products, combined with reactor core simulations, provides a new tool to assess both the thermal power and the fissile content of the whole nuclear core and could be used by the International Agency for Atomic Energy to enhance the safeguards of civil nuclear reactors. Deployed at only 7.2 m away from the compact Osiris research reactor core (70 MW) operating at the Saclay research center of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, the experiment also exhibits a well-suited configuration to search for a new short baseline oscillation. We report the first results of the Nucifer experiment, describing the performances of the $\sim 0.85{\mathrm{m}}^3$ detector remotely operating at a shallow depth equivalent to $\sim 12\mathrm{m}$ of water and under intense background radiation conditions. Based on 145 (106) days of data with the reactor on (off), leading to the detection of an estimated $40760{\overline{\nu }}_e$, the mean number of detected antineutrinos is $281\pm 7(\mathrm{stat})\pm 18(\mathrm{syst}){\overline{\nu }}_e/\mathrm{day}$, in agreement with the prediction of $277\pm 23{\overline{\nu }}_e/\mathrm{day}$. Because of the large background, no conclusive results on the existence of light sterile neutrinos could be derived, however. As a first societal application we quantify how antineutrinos could be used for the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.

Characterizing the spatial extent of epidemics at the outbreak stage is key to controlling the evolution of the disease. At the outbreak, the number of infected individuals is typically small, and therefore, fluctuations around their average are important: then, it is commonly assumed that the susceptible–infected–recovered mechanism can be described by a stochastic birth–death process of Galton–Watson type. The displacements of the infected individuals can be modeled by resorting to Brownian motion, which is applicable when long-range movements and complex network interactions can be safely neglected, like in the case of animal epidemics. In this context, the spatial extent of an epidemic can be assessed by computing the convex hull enclosing the infected individuals at a given time. We derive the exact evolution equations for the mean perimeter and the mean area of the convex hull, and we compare them with Monte Carlo simulations.

In this paper we analyze some aspects of exponential flights, a stochastic process that governs the evolution of many random transport phenomena, such as neutron propagation, chemical or biological species migration, and electron motion. We introduce a general framework for d-dimensional setups and emphasize that exponential flights represent a deceivingly simple system, where in most cases closed-form formulas can hardly be obtained. We derive a number of exact (where possible) or asymptotic results, among which are the stationary probability density for two-dimensional systems, a long-standing issue in physics, and the mean residence time in a given volume. Bounded or unbounded domains as well as scattering or absorbing domains are examined, and Monte Carlo simulations are performed so as to support our findings.