Study of the enhancement factor and electron potential in the D (3He, p)4He reaction using deuterated metal targets TiD and ZrD

Abstract

The study of thermonuclear reactions such as D(d, p)3H, D(d, n)3He, T(d, n)3He, 3He(d, p)4He, and D(3He, p)4He is of great interest in the field of astrophysics, as it affects the primordial nucleosynthesis, as well as issues of stellar dynamics. These reactions are also of interest in thermonuclear power engineering, in connection with the increased interest in the possibility of practical application of thermonuclear fusion. In this work, the analysis of the results obtained in the course of studying the reaction D(3He, p)4He was carried out. The results were obtained by us in previous works on deuterated metal targets ZrD and TiD with Miller indices [111] and [100]. There is a need to more precise study of the effects accompanying thermonuclear reactions at low astrophysical energies. The purpose of this work is to study the behavior of the screening potential [Formula: see text] and the reaction enhancement factor [Formula: see text], depending on the crystal structure of targets and the interaction energy. The studies were carried out on a Hall accelerator (Tomsk, TPU) in the energy range [Formula: see text]([Formula: see text][Formula: see text]keV in lab reference frame with a step of 2[Formula: see text]keV. Experiments have shown that in reactions using metal deuterated targets a similar effect as in reactions using gas targets was observed. Specifically, an electron screening effect was observed, which leads to an increase in the reaction cross-section with decreasing energy, and in case of metal target this effect becomes stronger.