Nuclear fusion from Coulomb explosions of deuterated methane clusters subjected to ultraintense femtosecond laser pulses

• 来源期刊: 中国物理B（英文版）
• 关键词: molecular clusters Coulomb explosion DD nuclear fusion intense femtosecond lasers
• 年，卷（期）: 2009,（2）
• 页码范围: 537-541
• 页数: 5页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

This paper reports that Coulomb explosions taken place in the experiment of heteronuclear deuterated methane clusters ((CD4)n) in a gas jet subjected to intense femtosecond laser pulses (170 m J, 70 fs) have led to table-top laser driven DD nuclear fusion. The clusters produced in supersonic expansion had an average size of about 5 nm in radius and the laser intensity used was 3×1017 W/cm2.The measured maximum and average energies of deuterons produced in the laser-cluster interaction were 60 and 13.5 keV, respectively, From DD collisions of energetic deuterons, a yield of 2.5(±0.4)×104 fusion ncutrous of 2.45 MeV per shot was realized, giving rise to a neutron production efficiency of about 1.5×105 per joule of incident laser pulse energy. Theoretical calculations were performed and a fairly good agreement of the calculated neutron yield with that obtained from the present experiment was found.