Bose–Einstein Condensate Theory of Deuteron Fusion in Metal
Yeong E. Kim
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source
In one page
This is Yeong Kim’s full statement of the theory the site’s chapter twelve keeps meeting. Load deuterium into a metal until the deuterons become mobile, confine them in a grain a few nanometres across, and Kim argues they behave as one shared quantum object — a Bose–Einstein condensate. Two consequences follow. The fusion rate loses its Gamow factor, the exponential Coulomb penalty that makes low-energy fusion vanishingly rare in free space, so reactions become possible at room-temperature energies. And the products change: helium-4 dominates, with almost no neutrons and almost no gamma ray, which is exactly the pattern electrolysis and gas-loading experiments have been reporting since Fleischmann and Pons. Kim then does the hardest bookkeeping in the field. He shows the 23.85 million electronvolts is carried away as ordinary slowing-down loss by deuterons sharing the recoil, and he explains the enormous tritium-to-neutron ratio through a sub-threshold resonance. He closes with six experiments that would confirm or refute it.
Why it matters hereChapter twelve needs a mechanism, not just an anomaly, and this is the paper that supplies one built entirely out of textbook physics — condensation, stopping power, resonance — with no new force invented anywhere in it. It is also the paper that names the experiments, which is what the site asks of any claim on the ladder.
What it claims
01The whole theory rests on one hypothesis: that mobile deuterons inside a micro- or nano-scale metal particle form a Bose–Einstein condensate. Kim states plainly that this makes the theory inapplicable to bulk metal, which offers no well-defined localized trapping potential, and that the hypothesis has to be verified by independent experiment.Sect. 3, opening; Sect. 4, first paragraph
Published and peer-reviewed02Ten reported experimental observations are accounted for by the same mechanism — suppression of the Coulomb barrier, excess heat of nuclear scale, helium-4 production matched to the heat with no 23.8 MeV gamma ray, far more tritium than neutrons, hot spots and surface craters, the requirement of deuteron mobility, and the requirement of deuterium purity.Sect. 2, observations a to j; Sect. 10
Published and peer-reviewed03The condensate fraction is calculated as a function of temperature for a deuteron spacing of 2.5 angstroms: about 8.4 per cent at 300 kelvin, about 44 per cent at liquid-nitrogen temperature and about 94 per cent at liquid-hydrogen temperature — which turns cooling the sample into a direct prediction, since the total fusion rate scales with the ground-state occupation.Sect. 3.2
Published and peer-reviewed04The energy problem is solved without any new physics. In a 5 nanometre palladium particle holding about 4450 deuterons, the 23.85 MeV is shared so each deuteron carries about 5.36 keV; the calculated chance of that deuteron then causing a conventional hot-fusion reaction while slowing down is about five parts in a thousand million million, giving a branching ratio near ten to the minus eleven. The release therefore heats the metal by ordinary stopping power, with no tritium or neutron signature, and no hypothesis of energy transfer to lattice vibrations is required.Sect. 5, Eqs. (8) to (12)
Published and peer-reviewed05The reported tritium-to-neutron ratios of ten million to a thousand million, against a free-space ratio of about one, are explained by a sub-threshold resonance through the 0-plus excited state of helium-4 at 20.21 MeV with a width of 0.5 MeV, which opens the tritium channel and leaves the neutron channel closed.Sect. 6; Sect. 10, second paragraph
Published and peer-reviewed06Kim names the tests. Smaller palladium particles should fuse faster than larger ones — consistent with Arata and Zhang at 5 nanometres and Kitamura at 10 nanometres, and with Purdue’s own null result on clumped 80 to 180 nanometre palladium blacks. Rates should rise at low temperature and at high pressure. And the cleanest check of the condensate itself is a diffusion measurement: deuterons should diffuse faster than protons in metal as the temperature falls.Sect. 8.1 to Sect. 8.6
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Read it · abstract
Abstract
Theory of Bose–Einstein condensation nuclear fusion (BECNF) has been developed to explain many diverse experimental results of deuteron induced nuclear reactions in metals, observed in electrolysis and gas loading experiments. The theory is based on a single conventional physical concept of Bose–Einstein condensation of deuterons in metal and provides a consistent theoretical description of the experimental results. The theory is capable of explaining most of the diverse experimental observations, and also has predictive powers as expected for a quantitatively predictive physical theory. It is shown that the fusion energy transfer to metal can be accomplished by the stopping power of metal without invoking hypothesis of fusion energy transfer to metal lattice vibrations. It is also shown that observed anomalous tritium production can be explained by a sub-threshold resonance reaction mechanism. The basic concept and important features of the BECNF theory is presented, and theoretical explanations of the experimental observations are described. Key experimental tests of theoretical predictions are proposed and discussed.
Yeong E. Kim. Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 4 (2011) 188–201. Research Article. Keywords: Bose–Einstein condensation, deuteron fusion in metal, nano-scale materials, sub-threshold resonance reaction.
(Abstract only. The complete article is free to read at the publisher — see the rights note for why the full text is not reproduced here. The companion sheet, Kim and Ward on the monopole transition, is at /library/stm-b25013f0bb.)
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.72132Licence checked in the article itself: the published paper, J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 4 (2011) 188–201, carries the line ‘© 2011 ISCMNS. All rights reserved.’ on the first page and under the abstract, and no Creative Commons statement appears anywhere in it. Unpaywall records the article as bronze open access — free to read at jcmns.org, but with no open licence attached — so this sheet carries the summary, the claims and Kim’s own abstract and sends the reader to the source. The claims below were written from the complete published paper, and the locators use the article’s own section numbering. Kim writes from the Purdue Nuclear and Many-body Theory Group, Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette. The companion sheet in this library is Kim and Ward’s ‘Bose–Einstein Condensation Nuclear Fusion: Role of Monopole Transition’, J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 6 (2012) 101–107, at /library/stm-b25013f0bb, which adds a second route for the energy: a monopole vibration of helium-4 that feeds the release straight into electron and lattice oscillation. This 2011 paper argues the metal’s ordinary stopping power is enough on its own.
How to cite it
Yeong E. Kim (2011) Bose–Einstein Condensate Theory of Deuteron Fusion in Metal. doi:10.70923/001c.72132
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