On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 7:22 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: The energy of two nuclei is conserved and > remains small during the motion through the Coulomb barrier. The > penetration through this barrier, which is the main obstacle for > low-energy fusion, strongly depends on a form of the incident flux on the > Coulombcenter at large distances from it. In contrast to the usual > scattering, the incident wave is not a single plane wave but the certain > superposition of plane waves of the same energy and various directions, > for example a convergent conical wave. >
I like explanations along these lines -- ones that don't require slamming particles into one another at high speeds. In the end I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being something like what the author seems to be getting at. Two analogies that come to mind: (1) when a large, heavy object hits the water at high speeds, you get one kind of outcome, and when it slips into the water at low speed, you get something else entirely. Or (2), when you don't have a key, to get past a door you're going to have to break it down, but when you have the key, it will open with little effort. There may be something equivalent to an electromagnetic "key" that amplifies the tunneling probability by several orders of magnitude for a certain period of time. I have no opinion about the details of Ivlev's theory. Eric
