Roles of resonant muonic molecule in new kinetics model and muon catalyzed fusion in compressed gas

Abstract

Muon catalyzed fusion ($$\mu$$ μ CF) in which an elementary particle, muon, facilitates the nuclear fusion between the hydrogen isotopes has been investigated in a long history. In contrast to the rich theoretical and experimental information on the $$\mu$$ μ CF in cold targets, there is relatively scarce information on the high temperature gas targets of deuterium-tritium mixture with high-thermal efficiency. We demonstrate new kinetics model of $$\mu$$ μ CF including three roles of resonant muonic molecules, (i) changing isotopic population, (ii) producing epi-thermal muonic atoms, and (iii) inducing fusion in-flight. The new kinetics model reproduces experimental observations, showing higher cycle rate as the temperature increasing, over a wide range of target temperatures ($$T<800$$ T < 800 K) and tritium concentrations. Moreover, it can be tested by measurements of radiative dissociation X-rays around 2 keV. High energy-resolution X-ray detectors and intense muon beam which are recently available are suitable to reveal these dynamical mechanism of $$\mu$$ μ CF cycles. Towards the future $$\mu$$ μ CF experiments in the high-temperature gas target we have clarified the relationship between the fusion yield and density-temperature curve of adiabatic/shock-wave compression.

Role of resonance states of muonic molecule in muon catalyzed fusion

“…The trend against the tritium concentration reproduces the experimental results with the dtμ * formation. In addition, we extended these calculations to a wider range of temperature after the submission, and succeeded in reproducing experimental values without adjusting parameters [23].…”

The Future of Experimental Muon Physics

“…There are a number of practical applications of muon physics that will only become more important in the future; for instance, cosmic ray muon tomography has been used for geological, archaeological, structural, and homeland security remote sensing applications. Muon-catalyzed fusion was a formerly extremely active field of investigation that is seeing a small-scale renaissance in recent times [24][25][26]. Traditional thermonuclear fusion efforts focus on confining very high-temperature (millions of degrees) deuterium-tritium plasmaeither via magnetic or inertial means-to overcome the coulomb barrier between the nuclei.…”