Publisher's Note: Acceleration of thed+dreaction in metal lithium acoustic cavitation with deuteron bombardment from 30 to 70 keV [Phys. Rev. C85, 054620 (2012)]

Abstract

Fusion reactions 6 Li(d,α) 4 He and 2 H(d,p) 3 H were measured in liquid Li. An ultrasonic target system was developed to form acoustic cavitation bubbles in liquid Li as an additional target. The material uncertainties of the target surface, which have been noted in solid target experiments, were completely rejected because contaminants could be removed in the liquid phase. The Li + d reaction was not affected by the cavitation process, and the derived screening potential was U s = 543 ± 38(sta.) +83 −153 (sys.) eV. This value can be explained by ionic Debye screening if liquid Li is regarded as a low-temperature dense plasma. The d + d reaction was found to be enhanced several times by Li cavitation, whereas the yield of the Li + d reaction remained constant; the ultrasonic effect depends strongly on the target conditions. The enhancement is caused not by Coulomb screening but by the high deuteron temperature in the cavity. The temperature was deduced from the energy dependence of the nuclear reaction enhancement rate as kT d = 590 ± 54(sta.) +676 −457 (sys.) eV. A kinematic analysis also yielded consistent results. Although no meaningful bubble fusion events were observed, extremely large reaction enhancements were occasionally observed.

The role of correlation entropy in nuclear fusion in liquid lithium, indium and mercury

“…Solid lithium has the ions localized in the crystal; the entropy of the crystal is practically the sum of one-body contribution S 1 (kinetic energy) plus very minor contributions from many-body correlations, from atomic electron cloud and from quantum effects. Crystal neither receives or gives energy to the incoming deuteron or to the environment except for the contribution given to deuteron from atomic electron cloud (contribution calculated by the adiabatic approximation), the ionic screening being negligible (in fact since the mass of ions is greater than electron mass, positive ions have slow mobility and cannot respond quickly to change [42,43]). When, in the other case, deuteron enters the liquid metal, its interaction with the environment is different for two reasons: it travels within a cage of ions/atoms and receives an amount of energy (that we can consider equivalent to a screening energy) because the ions in liquid metal, although non localized, are correlated.…”

“…Attempts to explain the experimental results in Sendai [1,2,3], in Bochum and Gran Sasso [4,5,6,7,8,9], and in Berlin [10,12,11] are based on: ionic Debye screening, assuming liquid lithium is a low-temperature high-density plasma (Toriyabe et al [34]); a simplified model of the classical quasi-free electrons with an electron screening distance of the order of the Debye length, but Debye screening is a cooperative effect of a large number of electrons inside the Debye sphere and this model needs a number of electrons equal or smaller than one (Rolfs et al [35,36,9]); use of dynamical screening as from [38] (Dappen et al [37]); deuteron dynamics with migration of electrons from the host metallic atoms to the deuterium ones (Huke at al. [30,31]).…”

Nitrogen Discharged from the Earth’s Interior Regions

“…Even if the convection current in the upper mantle is viscous fluid, the nuclear reaction could be promoted. In fact, fusion reaction 6 H with ~6.83 × 10 6 K were measured in liquid Li acoustic (ultrasonic) cavitation [47].…”

Temperature effect on screening effects and stopping power for low-energy d- 6 Li interaction in liquid Li

“…The details were reported in refs. [13,14]. The deuteron beam is bent by an angle of 60 • with respect to the horizontal plane to enter the target chamber.…”