Effective Interaction Potential in the Deuterium Plasma and Multiple Resonance Scattering

The effective interaction potential for charged particles is calculated in the deuterium plasma formed in the surface region of the palladium cathode in the electrolysis of heavy water. It is shown that the Coulomb potential is overscreened producing, at certain distances, an attractive potential between deuterium nuclei pairs and also between the deuterium nuclei and the surface atoms. This behavior of the effective potential in the deuterium plasma can be regarded as a counterpart of the Friedel oscillations of the electron gas at zero temperature. Because of this attractive potential, there are bound states for the deuteron pairs as well as for the surface atoms and deuterons. In these bound states the equilibrium distance between the nuclei is of the order 0.15 0.2 Å depending on the number density of deuterons. The fusion rate is calculated for the bounded deuteron pairs and it is found to be of the order 1/s 10   per deuteron pair for the highest deuteron densities. Furthermore, it is shown that larger fusion rates are possible for the deuterons bound to the surface atoms. This may arise by a process, where the trapped deuterons share the released energy collectively via a proposed Multiple Resonance Scattering (MRS) mechanism. It is then found that the He 4 -channel is the overwhelmingly dominant fusion channel. Moreover, the appearance of the transmutation processes in this MRS procedure is briefly discussed.