Related papers: Nuclear Reaction Rates in Dense Plasmas
In fusion reactions, the Coulomb barrier selects particles from the high-momentum part of the distribution. Therefore, small variations of the high-momentum tail of the velocity distribution can produce strong effects on fusion rates. In…
Detailed calculations of the contribution from off-shell effects to the quasiclassical tunneling of fusing particles are provided. It is shown that these effects change the Gamow rates of certain nuclear reactions in dense plasma by several…
The problem of determining the effects of the surrounding plasma on nuclear reaction rates in stars is formulated ab initio, using the techniques of quantum statistical mechanics. We derive a result that expresses the complete effects of…
The standard theory of nuclear fusion rates in a strongly interacting plasma can be (correctly) derived only when the energy release, Q, is large compared to other energies in the problem. We exhibit a result for rates that provides a basis…
We analyze the effect of plasma screening on nuclear reaction rates in dense matter composed of atomic nuclei of one or two types. We perform semiclassical calculations of the Coulomb barrier penetrability taking into account a radial mean…
We compare Path Integral Monte Carlo calculations by Militzer and Pollock (Phys. Rev. B 71, 134303, 2005) of Coulomb tunneling in nuclear reactions in dense matter to semiclassical calculations assuming WKB Coulomb barrier penetration…
Nuclear reaction rates in plasmas depend on the overlap (contact) probability of the reacting ions. Path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) calculations are used here to determine these contact probabilities, g(0), for the one component plasma…
The Coulomb barrier is in general much higher than thermal energy. Nuclear fusion reactions occur only among few protons and nuclei with higher relative energies than Coulomb barrier. It is the equilibrium velocity distribution of these…
Energy and momentum of the elementary excitations become independent variables in medium: energy and momentum statistical distributions are not identical. The momentum distribution and not the energy distribution is relevant for barrier…
A study is made of the power-law tail effect in the quantum particle distribution over momentum on the nuclear fusion reactions. Our results do not support the idea of averaging the fusion reaction cross-section over the momentum…
This article illustrates how very small deviations from the Maxwellian exponential tail, while leaving unchanged bulk quantities, can yield dramatic effects on fusion reaction rates and discuss several mechanisms that can cause such…
We argue that the Maxwellian approximation can essentially underestimate the rates of some nuclear reactions in hot plasma under conditions very close to thermal equilibrium. This phenomenon is demonstrated explicitly on the example of…
Explosive nuclear burning in astrophysical environments produces unstable nuclei which again can be targets for subsequent reactions. In addition, it involves a large number of stable nuclides which are not fully explored by experiments,…
Non-Maxwellian distributions are commonly observed across a wide range of systems and scales. While direct observations provide the strongest evidence for these distributions, they also manifest indirectly through their influence on…
Nuclear reactions proceed differently in stellar plasmas than in the laboratory due to the thermal effects in the plasma. On one hand, a target nucleus is bombarded by projectiles distributed in energy with a distribution defined by the…
The effects of the highly damped modes in the energy and reaction rates in a plasma are discussed. These modes, with wavenumbers $k \gg k_{D}$, even being only weakly excited, with less than $k_{B}T$ per mode, make a significant…
We study two different physical scenarios of thermonuclear reactions in stellar plasmas proceeding through a narrow resonance at low energy or through the low energy wing of a wide resonance at high energy. Correspondingly, we derive two…
A new general expression is derived for nuclear electron capture rates within dense plasmas. Its qualitative nature leads us to question some widely accepted assumptions about how to calculate the effects of the plasma on the rates. A…
The extremely small probability of quantum tunneling through an almost classical potential barrier may become not small under the action of the specially adapted nonstationary field. The tunneling rate has a sharp peak as a function of the…
Plasmas in which there is a threshold for a dominant reaction to take place (such as recombination or attachment) will have particle distributions that evolve as the reaction progresses. The form of the Boltzmann collision term in such a…