Eric, It appears that the photon-stopping power of electrons which are "dressed" in electromagnetic fields may be much greater than that of bare electrons - i.e., "dressed" electrons that are exchanging large numbers of virtual photons with nearby nuclei and other electrons in magnetic and coulomb interactions. See:
"On Compton scattering of energetic photons by light atoms in the presence of a low-frequency electromagnetic field" http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:919561:1/component/escidoc:919560/COMPT777.pdf The gist of the paper is stated on page 3: "...that spectra of both emitted electrons and scattered photons can be remarkably modified by the interaction with a weak low-frequency laser field." Perhaps even greater effects occur in intense e-m fields generated in carbon and metal nanostructures. However, since gammas would not even be generated in some proposed LENR theories (e.g., neutron capture), this may be moot. I have some more data, but not enough time to post it right now. -- Lou Pagnucco Eric Walker wrote: > I'm learning more and more how different the worlds of quantum mechanics > and high energy physics are from that of everyday experience. > > There's been an ongoing discussion about the viability of "active gamma > suppression," or the quenching of gammas, during a LENR reaction. This is > an interesting question because its outcome tells us something about the > kinds of reactions that are possible in light of the available > experimental > evidence. In this context the question of the viability the quenching of > gammas under any circumstances is an important one. I'm starting to > collect a number of interesting articles and links that seem to be > relevant > here, which I hope to put together in an email at some point. But before > I > do that I wanted to share this particular link, which seems promising: > > "Automatic quenching of high energy γ-ray sources by synchrotron photons" > http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0701633.pdf > > We investigate a magnetized plasma in which injected high energy gamma > rays > annihilate on a soft photon ï¬eld, that is provided by the synchrotron > radiation of the created pairs. For a very wide range of magnetic ï¬elds, > this process involves gamma-rays between 0.3GeV and 30TeV. We derive a > simple dynamical system for this process, analyze its stability to runaway > production of soft photons and paris [pairs], and find conditions for it > to > automatically quench by reaching a steady state with an optical depth to > photon-photon annihilation larger than unity. We discuss applications to > broad-band γ-ray emitters, in particular supermassive black holes. > Automatic quenching limits the gamma-ray luminosity of these objects and > predicts substantial pair loading of the jets of less active sources. > > > Some important details here -- the gammas that are thought to be quenched > are 10 to 1,000,000 times more powerful than the ones we're interested in. > So even though the conditions under which the quenching is thought to > happen are extreme, these ranges also provide an upper bound that is well > above what we would need. It is possible that the effect cannot be seen > below these energies, but perhaps it might. The authors require a > magnetic > field, but they suggest that the effect can be seen between 10^-9 and 10^6 > G. The lower bound, 10^-9 G, is what you find in the human brain, and the > upper bound, 10^6 G, is greater than but not too different from the > magnetic field of a magnetic resonance imaging machine. > > The authors mention in passing a related paper looking at the nonlinear > effects of pair production generated by ultrarelativistic protons. A > recent article at phys.org discusses how laser light coherently > accelerates > protons in a metal foil at higher energies than previously thought. > > http://phys.org/news/2012-07-higher-energies-laser-accelerated-particles.html > > > So we could potentially have ultrarelativistic protons in our optical > cavity, yielding pair production. The pair production cross section in > nickel also becomes non-negligible in the energy range of 1 to 30 MeV. > > http://imgur.com/MrE0K > > Eric >
