Recoil assisted low energy nuclear reactions

Abstract

Low energy nuclear processes, which are strongly hindered by Coulomb repulsion between the reacting nuclei, are investigated in solid environment. It is shown that this hindering effect may be essentially weakened (it practically disappears) if one takes into account the Coulomb interaction of one of the reacting particles with the surroundings. It is obtained that if the modification of the wave function due to Coulomb interaction with charged constituents of the environment is taken into account applying standard perturbation calculation of quantum mechanics then waves of high momentum with small amplitude are mixed to the initial wave of small momentum. This may be interpreted as the slow, quasi-free heavy particle of positive charge pushes a heavy particle of the environment and they can obtain (virtually) such a great magnitude of momentum (of opposite direction) in the intermediate state in that the probability of nuclear reaction with another positively charged, slow, heavy particle significantly increases. This magnitude of (virtual)momentum is determined by energy and momentum conservation between initial and final states. The mechanism (called recoil assistance) opens the door to a great variety of nuclear processes that are now thought to have negligible rate at low energies. The recoil assisted nuclear pd reaction is investigated like a sample reaction numerically. A partial overview of low energy nuclear reactions allowed by recoil assistance and leading to nuclear transmutations is presented. A critical analysis of Fleischmann-Pons type low energy nuclear reaction experiments is also presented.