On this point I'm reminded of the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect. Heavy
nuclei, under deuteron bombardment, undergo nuclear transmutation
short of the energy required to overcome the Coulomb barrier. A
deuteron is the most polarized nucleus, being possible to conceive of
as something like a dumbell. Apparently what happens is that a
deuteron approaches a target nucleus. If the polarization of the
deuteron is favorable, as the deuteron is deaccelerated by Coulomb
repulsion, the neutron end can approach the nucleus close enough for
the nuclear force to start operating. The proton is repelled by the
nucleus, but still attracted by the neutron due to the binding energy
of the deuteron. If the approach is close enough, the neutron is
stripped from the proton, because at that point the repulsive force
on the proton becomes stronger than the binding force of the
deuteron, so the proton is expelled, carrying a range of energies
which can be more than double the original energy of the deuteron.
What the deuteron has effectively done is to deliver a nice, fat,
slow neutron to the nucleus, so it can fuse.
I helped write the Wikipedia article on the topic, working with
ScienceApologist, who was a bit prickly, suspecting that I was up to
no good, trying to propose O-P process as cold fusion or something like that.
In fact, of course, something like O-P process might be involved in
the F-P effect, but I wasn't about to push it. Takahashi's theory
involves four deuterons in a tetrahedral configuration, and there are
two factors that might positively influence the fusion cross-section:
possible electron screening that could amplify the effect of
confinement, and polarization of the deuterons, so that the neutron
ends can approach and begin to attract each other. I don't know if
Takahashi has taken this into account; my guess is that he has. He
does predict 100% fusion within a femtosecond if the tetrahedral
configuration forms, which is remarkable, assuming he's done the math
correctly. Does the configuration form? Eventually, someone may
figure out how to check for that; but we do know that the rate of
fusion is very low. It might only be detectable through the heat and
radiation, i.e., after the fact.
