The screening effect of D–D fusion in Sm in a sub-low energy region (⩽20 keV)

Abstract

The fusion reaction may be significantly changed in a solid target due to electron screening on target nuclei while the projectile energy is very low. The electron screening effect of the D(d, p)T reaction in the deuterated metal Sm at low target temperature (T ∼ 133.2 K) has been studied in a deuteron energy region from 10 to 20 keV. The thick target yields of protons emitted in the D(d, p)T reaction were measured and compared with those data extrapolated from cross sections and stopping power data at higher energies. It is found that the reaction rates in Sm are enhanced over those of the bare nuclei. The screening potential in Sm under cooled conditions is deduced to be 520 ± 56 eV, which cannot be simply interpreted by the electron screening. The enhanced screening potential might be roughly interpreted with the classical plasma model of Debye, in which the screening potential decreases with increasing temperature while quasi-free metallic electrons are applied.

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“…Despite the limitation of the Debye-Hückel model to high temperatures (typically > 10 5 K for metals) a temperature dependence of U e was investigated in d + d reactions [1,15] as well as in decay experiments [6][7][8]. In Ref.…”

“…In Ref. [15], the host metal was cooled all the time, therefore no comparison between different temperatures was made (see [16] for a detailed discussion). Here, we focus on a possible temperature dependence of the decay of radionuclides.…”

Effect of deuteron density distribution on the deduction of screening potential from the D(d,p)T reaction in Be metals

“…A detailed description of the experimental setup can be found in Refs. [9,10] and only the special properties are given here. The main item of experimental equipment is a low-energy high-current beam generator with a duoplasmatron ion source.…”

A note on the quantum-tail effect on fusion reaction rate

“…We stress here that directly measured cross sections of low-energy nuclear reactions in a medium, when available, are higher than the expected values [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. To date, the observed enhancement factors are not completely understood [19].…”