Deuterium-tritium fusion process in strong laser fields: Semiclassical simulation

Shiwei Liu, Hao Duan, Difa Ye, and Jie Liu
Phys. Rev. C 104, 044614 – Published 13 October 2021

Abstract

We investigate the deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion process in the presence of strong laser fields with a semiclassical (SC) method. In this model, two nuclei with a given incident kinetic energy that closely approach each other are simulated by tracing the classical Newtonian trajectories in the combined Coulomb repulsive potentials and laser fields. At the nearest position or classical turning point, quantum tunneling through the Coulomb barrier emerges, and its penetrability is estimated with the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin formula. Nuclear fusion occurs after the tunneling, and the total fusion cross section takes the Gamow form. We find that the tunneling penetrability can be enhanced dramatically because the nuclei can closely approach each other due to the quiver motion of the charged nuclei driven by the intense laser fields. We then calculate the DT fusion section for a wide range of laser parameters according to various incident nuclei kinetic energies and obtain the phase diagrams for the enhanced DT fusion. We compare our SC results with the quantum results of the Kramers-Henneberger approximation and the Volkov state approximation.

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  • Received 29 January 2021
  • Accepted 30 September 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.104.044614

©2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Nuclear Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Shiwei Liu1, Hao Duan2, Difa Ye2, and Jie Liu3,4,*

  • 1Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193, People's Republic of China
  • 2Laboratory of Computational Physics, Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing 100088, People's Republic of China
  • 3Graduate School, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Beijing 100193, People's Republic of China
  • 4CAPT, HEDPS, and IFSA Collaborative Innovation Center of MoE, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People's Republic of China

  • *jliu@gscaep.ac.cn

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Issue

Vol. 104, Iss. 4 — October 2021

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