Thermonuclear fusion and generalized Gamow penetrability factor in intense laser fields

Abstract

A theoretical study on thermonuclear fusion including deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion and D-3 He fusion in intense laser fields has been shown in this article. With the laser fields expected to be available in the near future, some quantitative results for the laser-induced modifications to the cross-sections are given. It is reported that the cross-sections are more sensitive to the external laser fields at the lower energies. An explicit generalized form of the Gamow penetrability factor is given for the predictions of the laser-induced effects for some other similar nuclear processes.

Resonant tunneling of deuteron-triton fusion in strong high-frequency electromagnetic fields

“…Deuteron-triton (DT) fusion in strong electromagnetic fields is also intriguing and has attracted recent attentions [15][16][17][18][19][20][21], partly due to its potential applications as a clear, effective, and sustainable energy in the future [22,23]. In the high-frequency regime of laser fields, the tunneling probability of DT fusion could be enhanced in light of the Floquet scattering method [15] and Kramers approximation [16,20], respectively.…”

“…Based on Gamow tunneling picture [24][25][26], the DT fusion cross section can be written as a product of geometrical cross section, the tunneling probability through the Coulomb repulsive potential and astrophysical S -factor. Previous studies * Corresponding author: jliu@gscaep.ac.cn mainly focus on the enhancement effects on tunneling probability and assume that the astrophysical S -factor keeps identical to that in the absence of strong electromagnetic fields [15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Whether strong electromagnetic fields would change astrophysical S -factor remains unclear.…”