This is an extremely important paper, even if it is incremental to
earlier work. There had been an open question about the necessity of
deuterium, as opposed to protium - but now that is answered.
Holmlid's body of work going back a decade is by far the most advanced
in LENR. This is the future of the field, and it looks very much like a
merger of ICF hot fusion with cold fusion.
However, we must recognize that Holmlid does show both hot fusion and
meson/muon production processes with Deuterium - so essentially only the
proton-based reactions are non-fusion. By implication the net energy
with protons is far less - and he only claims net gain with deuterium.
Here is the relevant quote for that: "MeV particles are ejected by
laser-induced processes in both D(0) and p(0). Also, normal D+D fusion
processes giving ^4 He and ^3 He ions were shown to be initiated by a
relatively weak pulsed laser [using deuterium fuel]. Laser-induced
nuclear fusion in D(0) gives heat above break-even, as reported in Ref.
[15
<http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169895#pone.0169895.ref015>].
END = note that Holmlid does NOT say that protium does not give heat
above breakeven, only that deuterium does provide it -- but the lack
with protium is implied.
Thus we can summarize by saying that in both cases mesons/muons are
seen. But with deuterium there is also hot fusion, in addition to the
mesons, and this provides the excess heat, which is not the case with
protons. The 24 MeV gamma is replaced by a particle flux in the range of
20 MeV indicating that 4 deuterons fuse into 2 alphas. Sound familiar?
That is reminiscent of Takahasi's tetrahedral theory.
However, ordinary D+D fusion reactions only give an energy up to 3.0 MeV
in the first reaction step, and up to 14.7 MeV in the second step of the
reactions and this apparently avoids the 24 MeV gamma. Thus, nuclear
processes take place with deuterium which are indeed a new version of
hot fusion --with a new kind of multi-particle branching where gammas do
not occur.
The (possible) reason the proton reaction is comparatively weak despite
the massive decay energy of mesons is that decay occurs so far away from
the reactor that the energy cannot be captured. The particles can decay
hundreds of meters away on average.
Jones
Axil Axil wrote:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169895
Mesons from Laser-Induced Processes in Ultra-Dense Hydrogen H(0)
A new paper from Holmlid where he now deduces that LENR cannot be a
fusion based reaction because the energy of the mesons produced are
far to great. I respect a man that can change his mind under the
weight of experimental evidence.
The hydrogen nanoparticle that produces the mesons are 3 to 6 planes long.
