Related papers: Converting energy from fusion into useful forms
New calculations of the time evolution and isotopic composition for a network of nuclear reactions breathe new life into an old idea in nuclear fusion, burning solid room temperature lithium-6 deuteride ($^6$LiD) with neutrons. Modern-day…
Collisions with cold particles can dissipate the energy of a hot particle and therefore be exploited as a cooling mechanism. Kinetics teaches us that for a particle to be cooled down by several orders of magnitude, it will typically take…
Muon-catalyzed nuclear fusion (\mucf) replaces atomic electrons with negative muons, compressing atomic orbitals by about two orders of magnitude and enabling deuterium--tritium (D--T) fusion under near-room-temperature conditions. This…
Compared with the deuterium tritium (DT) fusion, the environmentally clean fusion of protons with 11B is extremely difficult. When instead of nanosecond laser pulses for thermal-ablating driven ignition, picosecond pulses are used, a…
In steady state, the fuel cycle of a fusion plasma requires inward particle fluxes of fuel ions. These particle flows are also accompanied by heating. In the case of classical transport in a rotating cylindrical plasma, this heating can…
For a sustained human presence on the Moon, robust in-situ resource utilisation supply chains to provide consumables and propellant are necessary. A promising process is molten salt electrolysis, which typically requires temperatures in…
Nuclear reactions leading to formation of new superheavy elements and isotopes are discussed in the paper. ``Cold'' and ``hot'' synthesis, fusion of fission fragments, transfer reactions and reactions with radioactive ion beams are analyzed…
The quantum-mechanical and thermodynamic properties of a 3-level molecular cooling cycle are derived. An inadequacy of earlier models is rectified in accounting for the spontaneous emission and absorption associated with the coupling to the…
We study the possibility of low energy nuclear fusion assisted by a low energy resonance. We use a simple potential model and replace repulsive Coulomb barrier with a step potential barrier. This is convenient since it allows us to perform…
What are the fundamental limits and advantages of using a catalyst to aid thermodynamic transformations between quantum systems? In this work, we answer this question by focusing on transformations between energy-incoherent states under the…
After summarizing the important commonalities between neutrino factories and muon colliders, the key differences are discussed. These include a much larger needed cooling factor (~10^6 in six-dimensional emittance), a smaller number of muon…
This paper examines fusion breeding, namely the use of 14 MeV fusion neutrons to breed $^{233}$U fuel for thermal nuclear reactors. This can be accomplished much more quickly than pure fusion. It can become main component of a power…
Fusion systems producing isotopes via neutron-driven transmutation can achieve economic viability well before reaching energy breakeven. Incorporating carefully selected feedstock materials in a blanket allows fusion systems to generate…
In a fusion reactor, a proton and a neutron generated in previous reactions may again fuse with each other. Or they can in turn fuse with or be captured by an un-reacted deuteron. The average center-of-mass (COM) energy for such reaction is…
The advent of high-intensity pulsed laser technology enables the generation of extreme states of matter under conditions that are far from thermal equilibrium. This in turn could enable different approaches to generating energy from nuclear…
It is generally considered that the neutron star cooling scenarios involving fast neutrino emission, from a kaon or pion condensate, quark matter, or the direct Urca process, require the presence of baryon pairing in the central core of the…
Nearly all energy generated by fusion in the solar core is ultimately radiated away into space in the solar atmosphere, while the remaining energy is carried away in the form of neutrinos. The exchange of energy between the solar gas and…
The effect of a sharp front separating the quark-gluon plasma phase from the hadronic phase is investigated. Energy-momentum conservation and baryon number conservation constrain the possible temperature jump across the front. If one…
Recently, it has been shown that altering the natural collisional power flow of the proton-Boron 11 (pB11) fusion reaction can significantly reduce the Lawson product of ion density and confinement time required to achieve ignition.…
It is vital that new clean and abundant sources of energy be developed for the sustainability of modern society. Nuclear fusion of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, if successful, might make a major contribution toward satisfying…