This is Rothwell’s presentation of Mizuno’s earlier work on the nickel mesh setup - from last fall.
At this stage neither of them was aware of things to come within a few months of time which made a big difference in the ease of going to a robust level of gain. It is very helpful to put the 4+ years of research into historical perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkTwecPeNe4 The most striking thing to me from this presentation is that Mizuno was using the nickel mesh coated with palladium early on with modest success - but did not see the big breakthrough until going to a lower pressure regime (and allowing the reactor itself to heat up.) Jones PS – again it is looking more and more like the low gas pressure could be the most important new parameter for success. To me this has to be related to the mean free path being extended to a resonance level with the IR input. The change to low pressure then favors the plasmon/polariton explanation - which may eventually turn up in hybrid for the mechanism which forms the dense clusters. Note – both Mills and Holmlid have used the low gas pressure regime for two decades or more.
