Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G21—NUCLEAR PHYSICS; NUCLEAR ENGINEERING
  • G21B—FUSION REACTORS
  • G21B1/00—Thermonuclear fusion reactors
  • G21B1/11—Details
  • G21B1/19—Targets for producing thermonuclear fusion reactions, e.g. pellets for irradiation by laser or charged particle beams
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G21—NUCLEAR PHYSICS; NUCLEAR ENGINEERING
  • G21B—FUSION REACTORS
  • G21B1/00—Thermonuclear fusion reactors
  • G21B1/11—Details
  • G21B1/23—Optical systems, e.g. for irradiating targets, for heating plasma or for plasma diagnostics
• • Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
  • Y02—TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
  • Y02E—REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GAS [GHG] EMISSIONS, RELATED TO ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION
  • Y02E30/00—Energy generation of nuclear origin
  • Y02E30/10—Nuclear fusion reactors

Definitions

• a laser pulse is used which is about ten thousand times or more shorter in duration, and the intensity of the laser pulse is much smaller so that plasma instabilities do not have time to develop.
• deuterium While discussed herein is the use of superfluid deuterium, other forms of deuterium may be used.
• the deuterium must just be cold enough to achieve the results described.
• Recommended temperatures of deuterium are from liquid helium temperature to room temperature or from 1° to 10° Kelvin.
• Disclosed herein is a method for creating coherent bosons such as deuterons, or alpha particles from atoms or molecules such as deuterium, deuterium compound or helium stored at a sufficiently low temperature which is to be determined by a critical condition by multiphoton ionization process.
• the multiphoton ionization is initiated by a laser pulse.
• the energy of the laser pulses after focusing must be large enough to initiate multiphoton ionization, but must not be too large so as to heat up the plasma created, and destroy the coherence.
• the duration of the laser pulse must be short enough so that plasma instability does not have time to grow, and the recombination of the ions and electrons does not have time to proceed.
• the method is for creating coherent bosons from superfluids by multiphoton ionization process.
• the coherent bosons can be coherent deuterons and coherent alpha particles, whereas the corresponding superfluids are superfluid deuterium and superfluid helium.
• the method is for creating more than one kind of coherent bosons from more than one compound at low temperature by multiphoton ionization process.
• Disclosed is a method for the release of nuclear energy through the creation of coherent deuterons from deuterium, or its compound at low teitperature which is to be determined by a critical condition by a multiphoton process.
• the coherent alpha particle induces the coherent deuterons to fuse much quicker into coherent alpha particles and coherent gamma ray with the release of nuclear energy.
• the method is for creating coherent gamma ray, which is also called gamma ray laser.
• coherent bosons such as coherent deuterons or coherent alpha particles from atoms or molecules such as deuterium, deuterium compound or helium stored at a sufficiently low temperature which is to be determined by a critical condition by multiphoton ionization process.
• the superfluid helium clusters are created by squeezing liquid helium in a cell through a nozzle from a high pressure region into a vacuum chamber.
• a deuterium cluster beam is formed by squeezing liquid deuterium in a cell through a nozzle from a high pressure region into a vacuum chamber.
• the two cluster beams are made to collide and merge into one compound cluster beam.
• a laser pulse is focused into the compound cluster to initiate nuclear fusion reactions.
• Figure 1 is a diagrammatic view of the invention.
• coherent bosons in nature, such as the Cooper pair in a superconductor, photons from laser, helium atoms in superfluid helium.
• coherent pions (1) in high energy hedron hadron collision. Since some of the coherent bosons such as in superconductivity and laser are particularly useful, it is interesting to investigate another system of coherent bosons. In particular, we wish to investigate the possibility of coherent deuterons or coherent ⁇ -particles. These coherent muclei may also enhance nuclear fusion. (2) In particular, we want to investigate here the production of coherent bosons from multiphoton ionization.
• Electrons will be emitted and form a plasma.
• the experimental condition is set up so that m coherent a particles are created: m coherent helium atoms: n ⁇ + mHe ⁇ m ⁇ + m(e-+e-) (1.1a)
• the laser pulse interacts with the plasma formed by electrons to create plasmons:
• the laser pulse can also interact with ions in the plasma to create phonons in the ion plasma:
• ⁇ i ion acoustic wave
• the phonons, or ion acoustic wave also will heat up the ions and destroy its coherence by heating.
• the laser can also create both plasmon and ions acoustic wave in the plasma:
• the ions a could also recombine with electrons and then we have no coherent charged ions left.
• the ions could recombine with electrons basically through either a two-body process: ⁇ + e- ⁇ He + + ⁇
• I the intensity of the laser
• ⁇ N the generalized cross section.
• ⁇ * decay width of excited atom A* decaying into electron (A + +e)
• ⁇ A absorption cross section of photon by atom A
• T fi ⁇ (n-N)y e-A +
• the plasmon wave can, of course, be quantized and treated as a quantum wave.
• Classical treatment is well investigated.
• ⁇ B ⁇ 1 + ⁇ 2
• the photon field is represented by its vector field A and m e m He are the masses of the electron and the helium atom respectively.
• the Euler's equation can be derived as
• the interaction Hamiltonian described in the last section (3.2) can, of course, be used to calculate quantum mechanically the transition rates for producing coherent a particles.
• the transition rate W 1 for the production of one a particle by N photon from one helium atom: ny + He ⁇ ⁇ + e- + (n-N) ⁇ is
• ⁇ 1 is the interaction time for a single ionization process defined by
• the quantum result for transition rate for producing coherent a particles can be expressed in terms of classical results as
• the ⁇ particles are charged, and normally they repel one another.
• To have coherent ⁇ particles means that all the charged a particles have the same wave function. They pile on top of one another. This may sound surprising at first.
• the cooper pair of electrons also have the same negative charge.
• the cooper pairs can form a coherent state because the nuclei provide a neutralizing background.
• the electrons emitted from the multiphoton ionization process provide the neutralizing background for the a particles to become coherent. To be sure that this actually happens, we can calculate the electron- ⁇ Coulomb scattering and see whether it can destroy the coherence.
• the ratio of coherent transition rate with the incoherent transition rate W 2n is For n electrons scattering with n coherent ⁇ -particle, the ratio of coherent transition rate with the incoherent transition rate W nn is
• ⁇ i are defined by (5.13).
• the condition for maintaining coherence is basically the same as (5.10). that of one one electron scattering off n coherent a particles.
• 1/ ⁇ will be the average final state number of electrons.
• Plasma instability To achieve coherence in the ⁇ particle, we require plasma instability to be negligible in the time scale (10- 14 sec) we are considering. Plasma instability will heat up the electrons and/or the ions , and hence destroy coherence.
• SRS stimulated Raman scattering
• SBS stimulated Brillouin scattering
• parametric instability that occurs in the interaction between laser and plasma:
• the density n o of electron in the plasma keeps increasing as the helium is being ionized.
• the growth rate ⁇ increases as n o 1/4 electron density to
• V ⁇ y v x 10- 5 cm 3 (6.11) we have 1.6 x 10 13 /sec (6.12)
• n e 5.2 x 10 20 /cm 3 .
• the incoming light wave will excite both plasmon ⁇ e and ion acoustic wave
• the growth rate is also a function of electron density in the plasma. We take the maximum value: *
• the ions once created by multiphoton ionization process, may recombine with electrons. If the recombination rate is faster than the rate of creating ions, we have no ions left. One of the final requirements then that coherent ions are possible is that the recombination rate is slow.
• SRS classical growth for creating plasmons
• SBS ionic acoustic wave
• the recombination rate is
• plasma instability is suppressed by a factor of at least 10, so that the growth rate is 10 13 /sec or less.
• the multiphoton ionization can be calcualted in first order perturbation theory.
• the transition rate is easily evaluated to be Equating (A.4) with (A.1), we obtain the effective coupling to be . ) which are in terms of parameters g A , g * , ⁇ t that are quantities genuinely in first order electromagnetic intereaction.
• the two electrons are fermions while all other particles are bosons,
• the simplest effective Hamiltonian is
• the transition rate is the rate of the transition rate.
• the two electrons are both scalar. We may treat them together as one boson field ⁇ e , where its momentum ' is the sum of momenta of the two electrons. The individual momentum of each electron is lost in this treatment. This may make one think we have underestimated the phase space of the final states in using (A.16) to calculate the transition rate. However, since it is only an effective Hamiltonian, any underestimation in the phase space will in included in the determination of the effective coupling.
• the transition rate from (A.10) is given in terms of effective coupling by: e m
• N 2 ⁇ + He + ⁇ ⁇ +e- (A.15)
• the helium atom first absorbs N 1 photon to become ionized into positively singly charged helium He + and an electron. Then the singly charged helium He + absorbs another N 2 photon to become doubly charged a particle and an additional electron.
• the effective Hamiltonian for these two step processes is
• N N 1 + N 2
• ⁇ 1 ionization energy of the first electron (A.20)
• ⁇ 2 ionization energy of the second electron
• Figure 1 is a diagrammatic viewof an apparatus which may be used with substances to create enhanced nuclear fusion.
• Coherent helium cluster beam indicated by open circles o is created at I by pressurizing superfluid helium through a nozzle with a diameter D1 2 ⁇ m into vacuum.
• S1 and S2 are skimmers.
• the enhancement factor can be calculated in two different ways: first by classical wave approximation, and then by quantum mechanical calculation.
• the enhancement can be further increased by the existence of additional ⁇ - particle in the initial state. Let us discuss them one by one:
• ⁇ ⁇ , ⁇ d , A are scalar fields for a particle, deuteron and photon, and g is the effective coupling. From variational principle we can get a set of Langrange. equations for these fields:
• ⁇ d (x) ⁇ o exp(- ik o .x - i ⁇ o t) (6) and the outgoing electromagnetic wave and a particle are expanded into fourier components :
• k ( k, ⁇ ) is the four vector.
• the frequency of the electromagnetic wave has a real pan ck and an imaginary part y ,
• the coupling g can be estimated from the transition rate of (3) by using (4)
• the transition rate r 1 is proportional to the Coulomb barrier factor exp(-G), and in general very small.
• the transition rate of (3) can be evaluated explicitly in quantum mechanics by the usual perturbation theory ( 1) to be:
• ⁇ n 2 ⁇ (E f -E i ) ⁇ l ⁇ ny,n ⁇ l H (1/ ⁇ E H) n-1 1 2nd> l 2 (12)
• ⁇ n 1/2 (2n)! (n!) 2 [ gcn ⁇ /2W (2hck)] 2n-2 ⁇ 1 (14)
• the enhancement factor (n!) 2 (2n)! comes from the coherent states of ny, no:, and 2nd respectively.
• the value of ⁇ n rapidly increases as n increases but its increase must be bound by the uncertainty relation ⁇ n ⁇
• the nuclear fusion rate can further be increased by providing a set of coherent a. particle in the initial state. This is similar to the induced transition in laser process, the reaction we want to study has coherent deuterons and coherent a together in the initial state:
• ⁇ n,n1 (2n)!n!(n+n 1 )![gcn ⁇ /2W(2hck)]] 2n-2 ⁇ 1 (17)
• n 1 10 1 1
• n 10 10
• the enhancement factor of having coherent ⁇ particles in the initial state over having no coherent a particles is about n 1 10 , which is 10 110 , a large enough factor to overshadow the effect of
• An ultra short laser pulse of the order 10 fs and energy of ⁇ J range is used to ionize the composite superfluid clusters.
• the laser pulse must be short enough so that plasma instability will not develop to destroy the coherence of the deuterons and a particles.
• the intensity of the laser pulse should be high enough to initial multiphoton ionization.
• the energy of the pulse must be just enough to ionize all the atoms and molecules but not much energy is left over to heat up the plasma (7 ) .
• Normally for a strong focused laser pulse on a small object ionization is completed in the first cycle of the wave or about 10 -14 sec.

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• 1992
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