Shrinking of Hydrogen Atoms in Host Metals by Dielectric Effects and Inglis-teller Depression of Ionzation Potentials

Conversion of deuterium to tritium in palladium has been clearly confirmed by the Arata-Zhang experiments. Endothermic element synthesis in Pd. and/or Ni layers due to high proton concentration, in analogy to stellar synthesis can be seen from the generation of very rare elements such as terbium. A convincing explanation is necessary. It was concluded phenomenologically that the reaction of the protons or deuterons by fusion or with the nuclei of the host metal occurs at a distance of about picometers with a reaction time of about megaseconds. It was noted that the Bohr radius rB of hydrogen atoms in a dielectric with refractive index n is changed to rBn . such that with the electron concentration of the host metals a plasma refractive index of 0.076 results in a value of 3pm. In order to understand the subsequent dielectric modification of the ionization energy, we apply the model of depression of this energy by the Inglis-Teller effect for which a model with the best agreement with plasma experiments was presented before. For our model of the dielectrically shrunk picometer hydrogen atoms, the low ionization energies result in a reasonable relation between dielectric properties and the effective Debye length. Preference of the reaction at surfaces or interfaces between different host metals are due to the same reduction of the dielectric response as observed with surface plasmons. For the swimming electron layer theory, the spreading of the double layer for metal interfaces was discussed.