The mechanism must logically explain how He4, tritium, and transmutation are produced without energetic radiation being detected. ***A couple of years back I thought EN Tsyganov was onto something. http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Cold%20nuclear%20fusion.pdf
4. THE PROBLEM OF “NONRADIATIVE” RELEASE OF NUCLEAR FUSION ENERGY. As we have already noted, the virtual absence of conventional nuclear decay products of the compound nucleus was widely regarded as one of the paradoxes of DD fusion with the formation of 4He in the experiments [2]. We proposed the explanation of this paradox in [4]. We believe that after penetration through the Coulomb barrier at low energies and the materialization of the two deuterons in a potential well, these deuterons retain their identity for some time. This time defines the frequency of further nuclear reactions. Figure 2 schematically illustrates the mechanism of this process. After penetration into the compound nucleus at a very low energy, the deuterons happen to be in a quasi-stabile state seating in the opposite potential wells. In principle, this system is a dual “electromagnetic-nuclear” oscillator. In this oscillator the total kinetic energy of the deuteron turns into potential energy of the oscillator, and vice versa. In the case of very low-energy, the amplitude of oscillations is small, and the reactions with nucleon exchange are suppressed. Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the mechanism of the nuclear decay frequency dependence on the compound nucleus 4He* excitation energy for the merging deuterons is presented. The diagram illustrates the shape of the potential well of the compound nucleus. The edges of the potential well are defined by the strong interaction, the dependence at short distances Coulomb repulsion. The lifetime of the excited 4He* nucleus can be considered in the formalism of the usual radioactive decay. In this case, N(t) /N0 = t e Here is the decay frequency, i.e., the reciprocal of the decay time . According to our hypothesis, the decay rate is a function of excitation energy of the compound nucleus E. Approximating with the first two terms of the polynomial expansion, we have: Here 0 is the decay frequency at asymptotically low excitation energy. According to quantummechanical considerations, the wave functions of deuterons do not completely disappear with decreasing energy, as illustrated by the introduction of the term 0. The second term of the expansion describes the linear dependence of the frequency decay on the excitation energy. The characteristic nuclear frequency is usually about 1022 s 1. In fusion reaction D+D4He there is a broad resonance at an energy around 8 MeV. Simple estimates by the width of the resonance and the uncertainty relation gives a lifetime of the intermediate state of about 0.810 22 s. The “nuclear” reaction rate falls approximately linearly with decreasing energy. Apparently, a group of McKubre [2] operates in an effective energy range below 2 keV in the c.m.s. Thus, in these experiments, the excitation energy is at least 4103 times less than in the resonance region. We assume that the rate of nuclear decay is that many times smaller. The corresponding lifetime is less than 0.310 18 s. This fall in the nuclear reaction rate has little effect on the ratio of output decay channels of the compound nucleus, but down to a certain limit. This limit is about 6 keV. A compound nucleus at this energy is no longer an isolated system, since virtual photons from the 4He* can reach to the nearest electron and carry the excitation energy of the compound nucleus. The total angular momentum carried by the virtual photons can be zero, so this process is not prohibited. For the distance to the nearest electron, we chose the radius of the electrons in the helium atom (3.110 11 m). From the uncertainty relations, duration of this process is about 10 19 seconds. In the case of “metal-crystalline” catalysis the distance to the nearest electrons can be significantly less and the process of dissipation of energy will go faster. It is assumed that after an exchange of multiple virtual photons with the electrons of the environment the relatively E small excitation energy of compound nucleus 4He* vanishes, and the frequency of the compound nucleus decaying with the emission of nucleons will be determined only by the term 0. For convenience, we assume that this value is no more than 1012-1014 per second. In this case, the serial exchange of virtual photons with the electrons of the environment in a time of about 10 16 will lead to the loss of ~4 MeV from the compound nucleus (after which decays with emission of nucleons are energetically forbidden), and then additional exchange will lead to the loss of all of the free energy of the compound nucleus (24 MeV) and finally the nucleus will be in the 4He ground state. The energy dissipation mechanism of the compound nucleus 4He* with virtual photons, discussed above, naturally raises the question of the electromagnetic-nuclear structure of the excited compound nucleus. Fig. 3. Possible energy diagram of the excited 4He* nucleus is presented.
