Investigation of light ion fusion reactions with plasma discharges
Name
1905.03400.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
984.9 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cf87c0c6a706801923c96890bb39d29f
Author(s)
Chiang, Y.-M.
Date Issued
November 2019
Journal
Journal of Applied Physics
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Citation
Schenkel, T. et al. “Investigation of light ion fusion reactions with plasma discharges.” Journal of Applied Physics, 126, 20 (November 2019): 10.1063/1.5109445 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
The scaling of reaction yields in light ion fusion to low reaction energies is important for our understanding of stellar fuel chains and the development of future energy technologies. Experiments become progressively more challenging at lower reaction energies due to the exponential drop of fusion cross sections below the Coulomb barrier. We report on experiments where deuterium-deuterium (D-D) fusion reactions are studied in a pulsed plasma in the glow discharge regime using a benchtop apparatus. We model plasma conditions using particle-in-cell codes. Advantages of this approach are relatively high peak ion currents and current densities (0.1 to several A/cm2) that can be applied to metal wire cathodes for several days. We detect neutrons from D-D reactions with scintillator-based detectors. For palladium targets, we find neutron yields as a function of cathode voltage that are over 100 times higher than yields expected for bare nuclei fusion at ion energies below 2 keV (center of mass frame). A possible explanation is a correction to the ion energy due to an electron screening potential of 1000 ± 250 eV, which increases the probability for tunneling through the repulsive Coulomb barrier. Our compact, robust setup enables parametric studies of this effect at relatively low reaction energies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5109445
