I wrote: I was wondering about this myself. Is the movement of protons or deuterons > thermal (random) or more organized? (I am imagining a cavity, here, and > not the confines of the lattice.) If it's more like packed traffic going > down the highway way too quickly, the likelihood of an event increases, for > example, when there is a slow, lumbering vehicle directly ahead. > > Or, to use a different analogy, when a school of fish or flock of birds > suddenly changes its direction. >
My guess is that it's hard to get heavy protons and deuterons to accelerate quickly in a cavity with the field strengths that we're talking about. I have no quantitative basis for concluding this; it's just a hunch. But there's another possibility that is very interesting: Assume a cavity with a left end L and a right end R. X-ray or THz laser light at the right frequency brings about superconductivity. Either induced or applied current is made to flow through the walls. I believe a magnetic field can induce a current of charge carriers as well as be generated by such a current. Protons and deuterons are positive charge carriers, albeit ones 2000 to 4000 times more massive than electrons. Normally current consists of the movement of electrons. But if we consider an induced magnetic field of a high enough strength, perhaps it could move ionized hydrogen in the direction either of L, the left end of the cavity, or R, the right end. If the end of the cavity is suitably blocked (here I'm borrowing an idea from Ed Storms), then the hydrogen will have no where to go. I'm thinking here of a kind of hydrogen press, where the ions are pushed towards one of the ends of the cavity, and the pressure becomes large. Eric
