Good post, Bob
Because of this effect (Letts/Cravens) and the optical phonon addition of
Hagelstein and the Holmlid work also – it seems clear that laser irradiation
of a metal matrix is perhaps the most promising open avenue for optimizing
LENR gain.
It would be great if THz lasers were available now at reasonable cost, and
maybe they will be soon but it seems like this is the stumbling point in
progress.
I would like to see what happens if sequential THz pulsing is followed closely
in time by a UV laser pulse on the exact same area of loaded matrix.
IOW the Terahertz pulse primes the target for the much more intense radiation
which follows.
This could be a shortcut to Holmlid’s claimed proton annihilation instead of
“mere fusion. “
proton annihilation… Ha ! what a concept, almost a LOL…
… and to think it could be generally ignored by the institutionalized Fizzix
establishment …
That would be the Science Story of the century. I was hoping to hear from
Norront this year.
From: Bob Higgins
Laser stimulation of LENR cells is an interesting subject. These experiments
can probe the underlying mechanisms of LENR itself. One of the things that has
not been characterized in the laser stimulation studies is the sideband noise
of the lasers. All oscillators exhibit sideband noise. Oscillators are
nonlinear electronic/electro-optical circuits. Because of the internal high Q
cavity, the intensity of the oscillation is Q times higher than the output of
the oscillator/laser. This oscillator nonlinearity causes the noise at
baseband to beat up to form sidebands around the oscillator primary output.
Also, any noise or modulation of the cavity beats to baseband. This means that
for a 400 THz red laser, there could easily be 8-15 THz sideband energy that
will mix with the laser's main component producing 8-15 THz baseband excitation.
So, a single laser excitation is not necessarily a pure 400 THz excitation - it
could directly excite 8-15 THz phonons with its sidebands.
The dual laser experiment is important because it provides a controlled
frequency of THz beat excitation. The LENR output was found to be triggered
only by specific frequencies of the beat signal that happened to correspond to
phonon excitation.
I don't think the phonon correspondence is air-tight because no one apparently
calculates true phonon solutions for the material. If you look at the acoustic
propagation formulation, they begin by expanding the nonlinear Young's modulus
in a series. Then they throw away the nonlinear terms of the series and use a
linear representation of the Young's modulus. Because of this, true phonon
solutions will not emerge from the equations because phonons are soliton
solutions. Soliton solutions require a nonlinear medium which the present
formulations of the acoustics do not represent (by choice because they cannot
solve the nonlinear formulated equation). Yes, you can find singularities in
the solutions of the linear formulations and say that's where the phonons must
lie - but it is only an approximate guess ("thar be dragons").
JonesBeene wrote:
The beat frequency they were after was in the THz range and this was in order
to fit Hagelstein’s theory of optical phonons … and yes - small gain was seen.
However, in the earlier similar work without beat frequencies – single laser
only - much higher gain (order of magnitude more) has been reported by
Letts/Cravens.
The reproducibility was apparently better in the later experiments - but I do
not think the lower result with the beat frequency is leading anywhere.
From: H LV
Beat frequencies of two lasers irradiating a surface appear in
_Stimulation of Optical Phonons in Deuterated Palladium_ by Dennis Letts and
Peter Hagelstein
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LettsDstimulatio.pdf
