Anomalies in fracture experiments, and energy exchange between vibrations and nuclei

Abstract

A variety of anomalies have been reported in recent years in fracture experiments, including neutron emission, elemental anomalies, and alpha emission. Such anomalies are similar to those studied in condensed matter nuclear science, which has been of interest to us in the development of theoretical models. In this work a brief review of the new theoretical approach is given, along with connections to both anomalies in fracture experiments and anomalies in other experiments. The fracture anomalies in this picture arise naturally as a result of the relevativistic interaction between vibrations and internal nuclear degrees of freedom, and up-conversion of vibrational quanta. A major conclusion of this work is that the elemental anomalies cannot be accounted for by disintegration as an incoherent process; since the observed products show a high degree of selectivity, while disintegration is very much non-selective. The possibility of disintegration as a coherent quantum process is introduced, and a suggestions for new experiments and measurements are put forth that can help to clarify underlying mechanisms.

Including nuclear degrees of freedom in a lattice Hamiltonian

“…In the end, we obtain a Hamiltonian that describes lattice dynamics and nuclear excitation that is derived consistently from an underlying relativistic Hamiltonian (the many-particle Dirac model). This model appears to be very closely related to models for two-level systems coupled to an oscillator that we investigated over the years [28], [29], [30], [31] in connection with the excess heat effect in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment.…”

“…We found that if the two-level system is augmented with loss, the coherent energy exchange rate is increased dramatically. This is due to the fact that destructive interference limits the rate at which coherent energy exchange occurs in the spin-boson model, so augmenting the model with a mechanism that removes this destructive interference would be expected to improve coherent energy exchange rates [28], [29], [30], [31].…”

“…Coherent energy exchange in these models works best when the coupling between the two-level transition (representing electronic and nuclear transitions) and oscillator (representing a vibrational mode) is strong. We studied a further generalization of the lossy spin-boson model in which two transitions are coupled to an oscillator, where one is strongly coupled and one is weakly coupled [32]. We found that the strongly coupled system could assist coherent energy exchange for the weakly coupled system.…”