Here is a brief writeup on Ron Maimon's theory of what might be called "Augur deuterons" [1]. It's not that different from the thread that went over this list a few weeks ago, but I had a chance to chat with Ron to clarify some of the details. To recapitulate, he's positing that when a charged particle or an x-ray interacts with a palladium atom in a palladium lattice loaded with deuterium in such a way as to cause the ionization of an inner shell electron, it is likely that ~20 keV will be imparted to a nearby deuteron. This particular amount of energy is significant, since it is adequate to cause d+d fusion in a beam of deuterium nuclei.
I got ahold of Ron at physics.stackexchange.com and asked some questions to help bring his theory down to the realm of hobbyists [2]. Some interesting points came out of that chat, including these: * The imparting of the 20 keV from a decaying K-shell hole in the palladium atom is expected to be the dominant channel when there is a deuteron in close proximity; apparently the density of states of the deuterium nucleus (if I can be permitted to use the term -- I have no idea what it means in any precise sense) is such that the energy is more likely to be imparted to the deuteron in the form of electrostatic repulsion than to an electron -- what would otherwise have been an Augur electron or an electron filling the decaying hole, leading to a characteristic photon. This makes the energetic deuteron an "Augur deuteron." * Ron thinks the ROI, as Robin referred to it, is sufficient to keep the reaction going; i.e., a traveling daughter alpha particle will not be so slowed down by its inefficient ionization of outer shell electrons as to fail to ionize enough inner shell electrons. I'm curious, Robin, if you know offhand of some back-of-the-envelope calculations that would help to get a more precise handle on whether the process would be too inefficient to sustain itself. Eric p.s., I just discovered another, simpler description of Ron's theory in a comment Ron left on an earlier post of mine, when I was enthusiastic about Widom and Larson's theory [3]. [1] http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2013/01/ron-maimons-theory.html [2] http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/6594/2012/12/3 [3] http://rolling-balance.blogspot.com/2011/12/physics-stackexchange-posts.html?showComment=1352836304228#c3555790009270996231
