Muon Catalyzed Fusion: Muon Capture by Proton from K- and L-Shells of αμ

Subhash Saini ； Kenneth C. Kulander

《Chinese Journal of Physics》 29卷2期 (1991/04) Pp. 115-129

並列摘要

Muon catalyzed fusion (MCF) is a physical phenomenon in which a negative muon can cause tritium and deuterium nuclei to fuse at room temperature, thereby giving the possibility that the need for high temperature plasmas or powerful lasers for fusion power generation can be eliminated. Recently there has been tremendous interest in the MCF both theoretically and experimentally. The sticking of muons to alpha particles after fusion will eliminate muons from the chain of fusion reactions and this is the main loss mechanism in MCF. The sticking probability is an important parameter as it places limit on the number of fusions that a muon can catalyze. Once the muon is stuck to aIpha particles it is eliminated from the cycle unless it can be stripped by collisions with other atoms (D or T). Collisions of the αμ with the surrounding DT and D2 molecules during the slowing down process will result in charge transfer, ionization or excitation of the discrete (αμ) levels. Stripping (charge transfer plus ionization) occurs from the ground state and from excited states of the αμ ion which were formed in the sticking process or by the collisional excitation. This stripping decreases the initial sticking due to the reactivation of muon.The boundary corrected Born (BCB) approximation is a first order scattering treatment which takes the asymptotic Coulomb phases into full account. It has been used to calculate the muon charge transfer cross sections from K- and L-shells of αμ to all the bound states of H. For muon capture from K-shell, our computed cross sections are in good agreement with experimental data on the equivalent electronic cross system in the proton energy range 50 to 180 keV. Beyond 180 keV neither quantum nor experimental results are available. However, because our results are in good agreement with experimental results in the intermediate energy region and the BCB approximation is a high energy approximation, the accuracy of our results should be better in the high energy region. The L-shell results have been compared with the results obtained by us by scaling classical trajectory Monte Carlo K-shell results.