Bland, R.W.

Fonda, L.

Matis, H.S.

Pugh, H.G.

Shaw, G.L.

Shin, M.

Slansky, R.

eScholarship - University of California

Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryRecent WorkTitleScenario for Cold Fusion by Free Quark CatalysisPermalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/4k33d13mJournalNuovo cimento A - nuclei, particles and fields, 102(5)AuthorsShaw, G.L.Bland, R.W.Fonda, L.et al.Publication Date1989-05-01eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of CaliforniaUC-113 LBL-27497 Preprint Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory U.NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Submitted to Physical Review Letters Scenario for Cold Fusion by Free Quark Catalysis G.L. Shaw, R.W. Bland, L. Fonda~ H.S. Matis, H. G. Pugh, M: Shin, and R. Slansky . . May 1989 For Reference Not to be takeO from thi• room ( Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract Number DE-AC03-76SF00098. to ' ...... Cl !.[J c (.~ ' tSI .I r ... : cr "') !lJ -< J -< . r to r n. I 0 I!) lJ -...J -< +' ...0 ,.... -...J DISCLAIMER This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government. While this document is believed to contain correct information, neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor the Regents of the University of California, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by its trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof, or the Regents of the University of California. The views an~ opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof or the Regents of the University of California. \.,..; SCENARIO FOR COLD FUSION BY FREE QUARK CATALYSIS G.L.Shaw1, R.W.Biand2 , L.Fonda3, H.S.Matis4 , H.G.Pugh4, M.Shin 1 & R.Siansky5 ABSTRACT Fleischmann and Pons have. reported the astonishing results of watts of power from cold deuteron fusion without large amounts of radiation. We present a scenario in which small numbers of free stable uu = 0 anti-diquarks (electric charge of - 4/3, mass. of a few GeV, and short range strong repulsion with hadrons) catalyze the deuteron fusion. The reaction channel He4 + 0 dominates. We predict bursts of neutrons, 'Nith a 3-body energy spectrum. However, independently from the findings of these experiments, the 0 catalysis is attractive in that it could provide large power production, with relatively low radioactivity, if this kind of matter is found and accumulated. May 2, 1989 Revised version, May 19, 1989 1 Physics Department, University of California, Irvine, CA 92717, USA 2Physics and Astronomy Department, San Francisco State Univ., San Francisco CA 94132, US . .\ 3Department of Tt1eoretical Physics, University of Trieste, Trieste 34100, Italy 4 Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 5Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA The astonishing recent report by Fleischmann and Pons, FP [I], of cold fusion of deuteron + deuteron (d + d) giving watts of power vvithout large amounts of radiation, seems to require new physics. Although there are conflicting reports from other laboratories [2] (in general reporting detection of neutrons but small production of energy), and our knowledge of the details of the FP experiment is sketchy, we would like to present here a testable scenario that may be consistent with the general nature of the FP experiment. No attempt is made to explain precise details. We shall speculate whether it is possible that the d+d fusion be catalyzed by the presence· of anti-diquarks which, being negatively charged and massive, can effectively screen the d-d Coulomb barrier. These particles are predicted by the glow model [3] of broken QC D to be free stable bound states of two anti-upquarks: uu, and therefore to have electric chargs ·· 4/3 and a mass of perhaps a few GeV. These uu particles, which we shall denote by Q in the following, have a strong repulsive barrier at short distance for interaction with other hadrons, leading to a suppression of production of neutrons and tritons. The catalytic cold fusion reaction processes far Q with deuterons would be (4] (Q d d)mol~cule ~ He4 + 0 + 23.9 MeV ( i ) ~ He3 + n + 0 + 3.3 MeV ( i i) ( 1 ) ~ t + p + 0 + 4.0 MeV ( i i i ) As we shall see, the He 4 + 0 .process (i) proceeds very rapidly, and at a rate ·of more than 104 times faster than the competing three-body channels (ii) and (iii). In contrast to catalysis by muons [5], in the 0 catalysis first of all the 0 cannot be tr8ated o.s a spectator and second the fusion processes (1 ), in particular (i), proceed by a strong final state interaction. Thus a two-body versus three-body transition probability estimate gives the suppression of (ii) and (iii) by a large factor with respect to (i). We shall also see that the concentration of free Q's in nature in order to explain the FP results, is consistent with present limits and would be measurable. We stress that, if the Q = uu particles exist in nature. the considerations made and the conclusions obtained in this paper are rather general and model independent. For the sake of definiteness, the discussion follows the glow model [3] of broken QCD, which specifically predicts their existence. The glow model was introduced 1n order to provide a Uleoretic;-;1 2 ... ' ,-.,_ ~ ... framework consistent with the standard ideas in GUTs (such as SU(S), S0(1 0) or E(6)) which would allow for the observation of free quarks, as reported by the laboratory of Fairbank [6]. SU(3)-color is spontaneously broken to S0(3)-glow via a color 27 of Higgs (which is contained in tile adjoint X adjoint of these GUTs). Five of these eight aco gluons acquire a mass m(g) which would have to be less . than 100 MeV in order not to violate various experimental constraints [3]. The remaining three gluons remain massless and provide a. confining force for S0(3)-glow non-singlets. In contrast to a single gluon or a single quark which are glovv non-singlets and thus are confined, a diquark in an SU(3)-color 6 has an S0(3)-glow singlet and thus can be free. It is not possible to determine definitively from present theoretical and experimental results whether the exact local symmetry in nature is SU(3)-color X U(1 )-em, in which case particles with color are confined, or S0(3)-glow X U(1 )-em so ttlat fractionally charged glow-singlet diquarks can be free, produced either in the big-bang [7] or preferentially in relativistic heavy-ion collisions [3] . . Zweig [4]· discussed t-he diqu.ark catalysis of fusion in 1978, in particular, the d+d fusion processes (1 ). What was required was to have a stable anti-diquark uu state (which we define as a) since the electric charge - 4/3 on the a is necessary for the formation of a ddQ molecuie. Other models of broken a co [8] allow for free quarks. However,· the glovv model [3] specifically has diquarks as the lowest state of a free fractionally charged quark system. Further, since the mass of an upquark is less than that of a downquark, we expect the most stable anti-diquark is indeed uu = 0. In our scenario, the properties of the a are: (a) a has ~ charge z = - 4/3. (b) a is stable. (c) The 0 mass m0 is roughly a few GeV. (d) The interaction of a quark with another quark is the usual iinear confining· potential (slope of 1 GeV/f) out to a distance of roughiy 1/m(g) (several fermis) then falling exponentially to 0; this tl1cr1 0 provides a strong, short-range repulsive barrier for a interactions with ordinary hadronic matter. (Just as it is very difficult to produce free quarks, it is very difficult to get them back together 1) Now let us consider the ddQ catalysis reactions given by (1), contrasting it with ddll catalysis (replace 0 with all in (1)). The interesting phenomenon of muon catalysis of p+d fusion was observed by Alvarez et al. [9] over 30 years ago. A pdjJ. molecule is formed, and the large mass of the ll relative to the electron confines the p+d to a s;n2ll enough distance to effect the rapid penetration of the Coulomb barrier. 3 '\ '! Much work has been done recently on understanding ~ catalysis of d+d and d+t fusions. The slowest part of the cycle is the time for formation of the dd~ and dt~ molecules, and the rates are enhanced by molecular resonances [5]. A few hundred d+t fusions can occur in a ~t lifetime of 2 microseconds (wt1ile this is a surprisingly large number; it is still too small, as yet, to use ~ catalysis as an energy source). In contrast, for a free anti-diquark Q with its Z = - 4/3 (compared to Z = -1 for the 1-l) and mass of a few GeV (compared to 0.1 GeV for the ~), both the molecular formation of ddQ and the fusion processes (1) should proceed at a much faster rate than for the analogous case with the 0 replaced by a 1-l· In particular, the dO _molecule has a charge -1/3 and can therefore form the ddQ molecule by Coulomb attraction. in contrast to the 1-l case where the d!-l molecule has a chargo 0. This mal<.es an enormous difference ! Under ideal conditions, perhaps such as having a high deuteron concentration as in the experiments of FP, the time for the fusion cycle (1) per a is incredibly short (note that the upper time limit appearing in (4] is useless). We have estimated this time to be of the order of 1_0- ro s. (Detailed calculations are still in progress on this point. Collision times, temperature related, may play a role.) Now, as we will argue, the He4 + Q channel (i) will dominate over the three body channels (ii) and (iii) by a large factor. Thus, to produce a net energy of a fevv watts, FP need to have 1012 fusions/s which would require roughly 1 00 O's active on the average in the catalysis. We shall return to examine this concentration of O's. First we give the simple phase space argument concerning the suppression of reactions (ii) and (iii). In contrast to 1-l catalysis, in the 0 catalysis given by Eq.(i) U:e 0 cannot be treated as a spectator. The key argument is that its mass is comparable to the other final products and in the He4 + 0 channel (i) tr1e relevant share of 23.9 MeV of binding energy can be transferred to U1e 0 vi2. the QCO strong. repulsion described in (d) above, rather than electromagnetically as for the 1-l catalysis (which transition probability is then depressed by a factor a 2). Thus to compare the reaction rates (i) versus (ii) and (iii), we evaluate the ratio R of the two-body versus the three-body total transition probabilities. Using the usual N-body phase space and integrating tt1e transition probabilities over all dynamical variL~bles, taking of course only S-waves for the calculations, we get 4 R (min/ J(2-body phase space) /J(3-body phase space) N(m0 ) [t. 2 E(GeV) ]1 12 /[.1 3 E/mintl2 (2) ~) where .C. 2 E(GeV) is the energy released in the two body process (i) expressed in GeV, .c.3E is the corresponding energy for the three body processes (ii) or (iii); mint is the relevant interaction mass; N(m0 ) is a very slowly varying function of m0 which has a value of approximately 102 in the relevant m0 region. Introducing the values of the energies released in processes (1) we get R (3) .. Reasonable estimates for the strong interaction mass m. 1 within 0.1 and In . 0.3 GeV yield a value between 104 and 105 for the dominance of the He 4 + 0 channel with respect to the neutron or triton channels. Note that we expect the electromagnetic process in wh~ch the Q, in reaction (ii) of Eq .. (1 ). comes off bound to the He3 ·(thus being lost for the catalytic process) to be greatly suppressed. If this scenario is relevant for the FP experiments g1v1ng watts of power from d+d fusion, there would then be 10 12 He4 produced per second from (i), along with roughly 107 -10 8 neutrons per second from (ii) and 10 7 -1 a8 tritons per second from (iii). We have argued before that, roughty, 1 aa active O's may be necessary to give a few watts of power; this means that neutrons and tritons are predicted to be produced according to N(neutrons and tritons) ::: 1a5 -1 a5 /s/0 (4) (In contrast, if (ii) and (iii) dominated, then FP would have produced 10 13 n's and t's per second.) Furthermore, in the three-body channel (ii) the energy of the neutron is not unique as in the case of )..L catalysis where the )..L is a spectator. Consider now the concentration of Q's in nature necessary to e::plain the FP results. O's in some concentration might be left over from tho big-bang giving a general level of occurance in matter and/or a more concentrated amount C(S) in specific materials (which seems more lil<e!y). In the FP experiments, the roughly 1 cm 3 rod has 1 a23 atoms of palladium. Thus, if the Q's 'Nere present in palladium, the presence of 1 ao active O's 5 .·:>.·:!J.; ..... ~· . ;:s (not bound to a heavy nucleus) would require a specific concentration of at least 1 Q/1 021 Pd atoms. Note that the a need not be on a Pd atom since, as stressed by Lackner and Zweig (1 0], a "quarked~ atom can have quite different chemical properties from the atom without the quark. Thus it might be that the "quarked" atom behaves similarly to a Pd atom, but has different, perhaps significantly less, mass and charge, so that it may be possible to free the Q from the atom and make it available for the catalytic fusion. A second possibility is that the Q's were present in· the 020 and were concentrated then by FP near the Pd rod. Assumin!;J that a few ~iters of 0 2 0 was involved over some time in the course of the FP experiment, this would require a concentration of 10/1024 0 20 molecules. In general, searches for free quarks involve null measurements on as much as 1 0 mg of material (11] giving a concentration less than 10/1 021 molecules, and thus are compatible with the C(Pd) and C(020) needed concentrations. (Note that although no quark search· has been made using Pd, Fairbank and collaborators [6) found evidence for free quarks on little spheres of the transition metal niobium at a level as large as 1 quark/1 019 Nb molecules.) .The above needed concentration of C(0 20) could be tested by the SFSU-LBL-LANL-UCl quark search collaboration: As in the searches [12] and [13], at accelerators, for free quarks produced in high energy collisions, tanks of liquid were used to stop secondaries, and any charged atoms were collected electrostatically on gold-coated electrodes. The l\u coatings were dissolved in a small drop of mercury which was then tested for quarks in the San Francisco State University automated Millikan apparatus. These published negativ8 findings can be used here to set limits on the Q concentration in these liquids. In [12], tanks containing 180 kg of liquid argon were used, and about 1% of the mercury was measured; this gives a limit of C(Ar) < 10/1025 Ar atoms. Similarly, in [13], tanks of liquid nitrogen were used, giving a limit of C(N2) < 1 Q/1 025 N 2 molecules. Thus, we should be readily able to use this collection and detection method on tanks of 020 to test whether Q's are present at the needed level of 10/1024 0 20 molecules. A few points are worth noting concerning the a catalysis scenario 1n the other cold fusion experiments [2]. As already pointed out, roughly 1 CO active a·s are necessary in order to obtain watts of power. Consider, on ti-;e other hand, the extreme case in which, at a given time, only one 0 is 6 active in an experimental apparatus. Then a large, localized 1n time. burst of neutrons, separated in time by 1 o· 5 - 1 o·6 seconds, according to Eq.(4), would be expected since the 0, after having catalyzed a number of fusions, might then escape from the reaction region (and thus the thickness of the transition metal electrode may play a rol·e) or become ~,:~ trapped by a nucleus with Z > 1. ' ' ) '<--,.- Finally, another important prediction of this paper is that the neutrons should not have a fixed energy of 2.45 MeV, but should have a three-body energy spectrum. In conclusion, we would however like to point out that, independently from the Fleischmann-Pons and similar experiments (and the various attempts to a theoretical understanding of this phenomenon), the c.nti-diquark catalysis is very interesting as it can provide [4]. in the long run, a way to get large energy production via cold d+d fusion (if the anti-di"quarks Q = Gu exist at all and one has been able to properly accumulate them). Furthermore, the radioactivity would be much less than that obtained in hot fusion since the He4 +0 reaction channel dominates. We would like to thank R.E.Peierls, F.Demanins and F.Tommasini for helpful discussions. 7 REFERENCES [1] M. Fleischmann and S. Pons, J. Electroanal. Chem. 2.6.1 (1989) 301. [2] S.E. Jones, E.P. Palmer, J.B. Czirr, D.L. Decker, G.L. Jensen, J.M. Thorne, S.F. Taylor and J. Rafelski, Brigham Young University Preprint, March 23, 1989; A De Ninno, A. Fratto Iiiio, G. Lollobattista, L. Martinis, M. Martone, L. Mori, S. Podda, F. Scaramuzzi, ENEA preprint April 1989; P. Perfetti, F. Cilloco, R. Felici, M. Capozi and A. lppoliti, CNR preprint, April 1989; other numerous experiments performed at various laboratories around the world, as reported in ·recent newspapers. l3i R. Siansky, T. Goldman and G.L. Shaw, Phys. Rev. Lett. 11. (1981) 887; G.L Shaw and R. Slansky, Phys. Rev. Lett. ~ (1983) 1967. [4] G. Zweig, Science .2.Q.1 (1978) 973. [5] .S.E. Jones, Nature 32.1 (1986) 127. [6] G.S. LaRue, J.D. Phillips and W.M. Fairbank, Phys. Rev. lett. 4Q. (1981) 967. [7] E. W. Kolb, G. Steig man and M.S. Turner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 4 7 ( 1981) 1357. [8] A. De Rujula, R.C. Giles and R.l. Jaffe, Phys. Rev . ..l21.Z (1978) 286. [9] L. W. Alvarez et al., Phys. Rev . .1..Q2 (1957) 1127. [1 0] K.S. Lackner and G. Zweig, Phys. Rev. 028 (1983) 1671 . . [ 1 ·tj rvi. Marinelli and G. Morpurgo, Phys. Rep . .8.5. (1982) 162 and references therein; D. Liebowitz, M. Binder and K.O.H. Ziock, Phys. Rev. lett. 5__Q (1983) 1640; P. F. Smith et al., Phys. Lett. 1538 (1985) 188; R.G. Milner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. ll (1985) 1472; D.C. Joyce et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. ll (1983) 731; M.L. Savage et al., Phys. Lett. 1678 (1986) 481. [ 1 2] G.L. Shaw et al. Phys. Rev. QJJi (1987) 3533. [13] H.S. Matis et al., Phys. Rev. ~ (1989) 1851. 8 ( ' ' 011' -~r ~.~~~~:.-~ LA~NCEBERKE~ABORATORY TECHNICAL INFORMATION DEPARTMENT ·1 CYCLOTRON ROAD BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720 ~,.1'~~-"li'-

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Scenario for Cold Fusion by Free Quark Catalysis

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Scenario for Cold Fusion by Free Quark Catalysis

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