Influence of chaos on the fusion enhancement by electron screening

Abstract

Abstract. We study the effect of screening by bound electrons in low energy nuclear reactions. We use molecular dynamics to simulate the reactions involving many electrons: D+d, D+D, 3 He+d, 3 He+D, 6 Li+d, 6 Li+D, 7 Li+p, 7 Li+H. Quantum effects corresponding to the Pauli and Heisenberg principles are enforced by constraints in terms of the phase space occupancy. In addition to the well-known adiabatic and sudden limits, we propose a new "dissipative limit" which is expected to be important not only at high energies but in the extremely low energy region. The dissipative limit is associated with the chaotic behavior of the electronic motion. It affects also the magnitude of the enhancement factor. We discuss also numerical experiments using polarized targets. The derived enhancement factors in our simulation are in agreement with those extracted within the R-matrix approach. PACS. 25.45.-z2 H-induced reactions -34.10.+x General theories and models of atomic and molecular collisions and interactions (including statistical theories, transition state, stochastic and trajectory models, etc.)

Dynamical Pair Production at Sub-Barrier Energies for Light Nuclei

“…Thus, according to Equations ( 17) and ( 18), the ions either gain 2m T of kinetic energy, or there is no change in kinetic energy at the moment of production. This situation is very interesting, especially in the sub-barrier fusion of light nuclei since, even in the case of zero kinetic energy gain from the ions, the presence of the electron in the middle of the two ions lowers the Coulomb barrier, thus enhancing the fusion probability [20,25]. We are interested in unbound positrons with E + > m T .…”

“…We show that in opportune conditions, the pair may screen the Coulomb repulsion between the ions giving them an extra acceleration towards each other. This effect may increase the fusion cross-section above the adiabatic limit [20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

New scheme to trigger fusion in a compact magnetic fusion device by combining muon catalysis and alpha heating effects

“…Optimization mechanisms of , as well as numerical estimates can be seen in Refs. [42, 49–51]. The optimal value for is in the range of 0.007–0.0008 and for after muon regeneration is 0.0007 or lower.…”

“…The CF depends also on the temperature of the D–T plasma. The international literature [11–13, 42, 49–51, 54–56] enables parametric studies of CF as a function of the plasma temperature and estimate sticking coefficient and the number of fusions per muon ( ) which for low temperature plasma could be up to [42, 54, 56] . But the experimental results are limited and there is not yet experimental setup using the proposed scheme of operation of the compact magnetic fusion device.…”