Nuclear fusion reaction rates for strongly coupled ionic mixtures

TL;DR

This paper investigates how plasma screening influences nuclear reaction rates in dense ionic mixtures, using semiclassical calculations and Monte Carlo data to derive analytical expressions applicable to multicomponent plasmas.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining Monte Carlo data and semiclassical calculations to accurately estimate nuclear reaction rates in strongly coupled ionic mixtures.

Findings

Derived analytical expressions for reaction rates in multicomponent ionic mixtures.

Analyzed Gamow-peak energies across different nuclear burning regimes.

Applied results to nuclear burning in C-O mixtures.

Abstract

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 field potential of plasma ions. The mean field potential is extracted from the results of extensive Monte Carlo calculations of radial pair distribution functions of ions in binary ionic mixtures. We calculate the reaction rates in a wide range of plasma parameters and approximate these rates by an analytical expression that is expected to be applicable for multicomponent ions mixtures. Also, we analyze Gamow-peak energies of reacting ions in various nuclear burning regimes. For illustration, we study nuclear burning in C-O mixtures.