Calculations of Nuclear Reactions Probability in a Crystal Lattice of Lanthanum Deuteride

Abstract

The dynamic model of electron orbitals deformation (EODD) was previously devised for palladium deuteride. It has now been applied to calculate the probability of nuclear reactions of hydrogen isotopes in the crystal lattice of lanthanum deuteride. In a series of computer simulations, the probability of D-D approach for random initial conditions was calculated, when the initial energies of the approaching deuterons were set in the range of 0.001-9.0 eV. For each experimental value of D-D approach the reaction rate was calculated on the shifted Coulomb potential with the shift energy, which equals to the energy of screening. The mean distance of D-D approach on the whole series equals 0.19 Å. More than 54% of all experimental values show an approach of deuterons for a distance less than 0.1 Å. The average reaction rate for the given set of the initial conditions is 10 3.28 DD -1 s -1 . This is three orders of magnitude less than the analogous rate calculated earlier for palladium deuteride. Allowing for the higher D content and the higher number of adjacent tetrahedral sites in LaD 3 as compared with PdD 0,6 , an overall nuclear fusion rate in lanthanum deuteride will be only slight lower than in palladium deuteride, that is, 10 -12 -10 -14 DD -1 s -1 .To achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanism and peculiar features of nuclear reactions in condensed matter, it is very important to expand a circle of substances that have been investigated. However, direct experimental research of new materials involves considerable difficulties, as the observable effects only slightly exceed the sensitivity of instrumentation, or the background level. In this connection, a random search of all substances to find which ones can catalyze cold nuclear fusion would be labor consuming and ineffective, especially taking into account the variations of their physical state and impurity content. Although most research on nuclear reactions in metal have been done with palladium, the high price and limited quantities of this material hinder the practical use of it. From the foregoing, the importance of theoretical calculation for search of materials is clear -a search to find which materials can be activated to produce nuclear fusion at low energies.We conducted a simulation of nuclear reactions of deuterium in palladium crystal lattice based on a dynamic model of electron orbital deformation in which hydrogen atom are located in octahedral sites of closely packed metal atoms [1][2][3][4]. The calculation results correspond within an order of magnitude to the experimental measurements of excess energy output (see, for example, [5] and reviews in [1,6]).Later, using the same model, the rate of a nuclear reaction was calculated in a titanium deuteride, where deuterium atoms are situated in tetrahedral sites of a crystal lattice, and the limiting content corresponds to TiD 2 crystal structure [4].