Two technical papers, which ostensibly have nothing to do with LENR, may tell us something about one (of many) future pathways for implementation of the technology - which involves direct electrical conversion of sunlight into current.
As crazy as it may sound at first: solar light can possibly be implemented as the primary input for a dogbone type of reactor, after which the entire output is converted directly. This niche is a type of "boosted solar" and is more likely now, following the Tesla announcement - since storage of daytime power will be affordable. Solar photons would be multiplied by hydrogen fractionalization. Imagine the combination of *Solar + LENR* where instead of low rate conversion of solar photons, as with photovoltaics, we can boost that by an order of magnitude, as solar photons are multiplied by the UV of ground state redundancy via SPP interaction with hydrogen. Focused sunlight on alumina tubes would be used to create SPP which then produce stable fractional ion states, emitting UV, and converting all photons to electricity. "A New Way to Convert Light to Electricity" from Caltech is one paper to look at: Simply by shining light onto metallic nanostructures, an entirely new way to generate charge segregation, and eventually - electrical energy from SPP has been demonstrated. This kind of surface could be nickel-based, and the charge segregation based on stable fractional ions (f/H- and f/Li+ ). http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/10/new-way-convert-light-electricity- metal-plasmonic In such a system, the intensity of photons from solar light could be multiplied by an order of magnitude with SPP creation - which is then forcing hydrogen and lithium into fractional states - so we have a shortcut to a working system which avoids the constant replacement of heating wire to produce incandescence. Even now we can see that the resistance wire for input power is the Achilles heel - the major failure mode. There is synergy in using solar to remedy this problem, with the drawback being operation during daylight hours. In fact, the present dogbone type of reactor should be labeled a "luminescent reactor" if the predominant mode of operation involves SPP production following incandescence. "Slow light" is the phenomenon of lossless slowing and storage of photons in a translucent media such as alumina where coherence is then a side effect. "A Stern-Gerlach experiment for slow light" by Karpa and Weitz is another piece of the puzzle (but the paper is unintended for LENR). In the context of the dogbone- if and when plasmon/ polaritons are found to be the operative characteristic, it is suspected that slow light coherence will be strongly contributory to gain, and could even function to carry electrical current. http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0603218 EIT or "electromagnetically induced transparency" is the magnetic modulation of light through certain media, even materials of low magnetic susceptibility, by means of quantum interference. Media exhibiting EIT, which include doped alumina, have properties such as drastically slowed group velocity - and it is this slow light which allows a magnetic field to be felt by photons - which otherwise would not be affected. Photons - for practical purposes, are a form of "displacement current" (as opposed to conduction current in Maxwell's equations). but when made to more closely resemble conduction current, via magnetic polarization and coherence - photon conversion can arguably go directly to electricity in one step at the same time displacement current evolves. Too bad that the geniuses at CalTech and the Atwater Research Group suffer from the same negative mindset on LENR, as does most of conventional physics . since this kind of solar boosting would be the proverbial "match made in heaven". well, if not heaven, then at least a match made in the coronal halo. :-) http://daedalus.caltech.edu/ BTW - with Tesla's new battery storage system, any type of solar enhancement is looking like a better substitute for fossil fuels.
