From: Bob Higgins
- The high relative permeability of mu-metal only exists for low frequencies. By the time you get to 1MHz, the permeability of mu-metal has fallen an order of magnitude and it keeps declining at that rate. Don't think that mu-metal has extraordinary magnetic properties at optical frequencies by virtue of its initial low frequency relative permeability. I agree with this. In fact, Letts indicated that a constant or slowly changing external field was preferable. The reason for that is not immediately evident. My hypothesis is more along the lines of the Mu metal being able to internalize a low (>800 Gauss) applied field or even a much lower internal field from the SmCo powder which Cravens was providing at NI Week. The result of this is an oscillation between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic effects - when the temperature is near the Curie point. That oscillation apparently does not need to be rapid. - As I recall, Tom Claytor's report regarding mu-metal was that in his system it had the greatest rate of tritium production (which is what I believe he was optimizing for). This did not mean that mu-metal had the greatest LENR rate of the materials he tried. Yes. That is a good point. Plus Claytor uses high voltage. There is no obvious indication that Mu metal optimizes for another gainful reaction, which does not produce tritium. That is an inference, which may or may not be justified by the fact that tritium would be more difficult to produce than another related anomaly which was non-nuclear. IOW the reason that the Mu metal activity could be broader in scope - is that tritium (in very small amounts) could be the end result of a two-stage reaction which is non-nuclear in the first stage yet produces excess heat without tritium- leaving an energy-depleted state that then supports real fusion when high voltage is present. Tritium would then be the final result of accumulated QM effects in a second stage. Claytor only gets very small amounts of tritium anyway, and apparently he is not concerned with excess heat. That is a missing detail. But certainly, those results with Mu metal could be limited to tritium – OTOH there seems to be enough of a hint there to warrant looking for a broader application. Jones Beene wrote: Just when it looked like things were becoming clearer in LENR theory, they seem to have become more complicated. Ockham fails again – no surprise really, since “parsimony” always fails miserably when QM enters the picture. SPP was the “catch-phrase” of the day for understanding LENR, due to the influence of NASA and Larsen, but a similar effect called spinplasmonics (SP) fits many experimental circumstances better than does SPP. This is because SP happens in a metal, without need of a dielectric, and has a magnetic component. Here is a mainstream paper that touches on the SP phenomenon but does not mention LENR. http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/112/10/10.1063/1.4765028 There was a time when the two, SPP and SP, were considered to be part of the same general phenomenon, but on closer differentiation - if a choice needs to be made, the merits of each should be considered relative to precise details in any experiment. Yet both effects can be active in the same experiment, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. In short, if the active region is conductive and ferromagnetic (or strongly paramagnetic) with no dielectric, then spinplasmonics fits better. When the active region has a metal-dielectric interface and is indifferent to magnetism, then SPP fits better. Is this being unnecessarily pedantic? Only if one wants to marginalize, rather than emphasize, the role of magnetism. If magnetism is highly important, then one more detail about a Mu metal connection (following Claytor’s revelation at MIT). When photon upconversion was first discovered by François Auzel, he thought there was net gain. Of course, his peers cautioned him about publishing such “nonsense” as overunity. His patent has been expired for decades (http://patents.justia.com/inventor/francois-f-auzel) and never was commercially important. An example is the upconversion of infrared light into visible light, which would be important for either SPP or spinplasmonics which ostensibly need optical photons. Here is the big surprise. Nickel may be important for upconversion of photons – more so than any other physical property. The prime materials for photon upconversion are luminescent ions Ni2+ and Mo3+ both of which elements are found in Mu metal. Surface ionization makes them active. That may not be coincidental, since optics and magnetics may be intimately entwined in Mu metals, which are a starting point for LENR ….Which then are activated by spinplasmonics….Which then create a continuing supply of DDL (deep Dirac layer) dense hydrogen….Which then disrupts the Dirac “sea” ….Which then yield binding energy photons of 6.8 eV….Which then thermalize into heat, finally providing thermal gain. And yes, Ockham fails again and “parsimony” always looks like a silly rule-of-thumb when QM enters the picture. Jones