A novel approach to proton-boron-11 fusion

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel muon-assisted approach to enhance proton-boron-11 fusion by dynamically screening the Coulomb barrier, potentially enabling fusion at lower energies and offering a new ignition pathway.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic scenario involving muonic hydrogen to lower the Coulomb barrier and significantly increase fusion cross-section at sub-100 keV energies.

Findings

Muon inclusion enhances tunneling probability by several orders of magnitude below 100 keV.

Dynamic screening by the muon cloud modifies the Coulomb potential, reducing the fusion threshold.

The approach offers a promising alternative for catalyzing p-11B fusion and potential ignition.

Abstract

Proton-boron-11 (p-$^{11}$B) fusion is a highly attractive aneutronic pathway for clean energy production, offering abundant fuel, negligible neutron activation, and the potential for direct energy conversion of charged $\alpha$ particles. However, its practical implementation is severely hindered by the extremely high Coulomb barrier, necessitating ignition temperatures far beyond those of conventional deuterium-tritium reactions. In this work, we propose a novel approach to enhance the low-energy fusion cross-section by introducing a negative muon ($\mu$). Instead of relying on the thermal equilibrium formation of a muonic molecule, we investigate a kinetic scenario in which a muonic hydrogen atom (p$\mu$) is formed first and subsequently bombarded with a $^{11}$B nucleus. We quantitatively characterize the dynamic screening of the proton's Coulomb field by the tightly bound $\mu$ cloud, the resulting modified Coulomb potential substantially lowers the effective barrier at intermediate separations. We also evaluate the penetrability, reaction cross-section, and reactivity of the p$\mu$-$^{11}$B system, the results indicate that the inclusion of $\mu$ enhances the tunneling probability by several orders of magnitude at incident energies below 100~keV, thereby significantly reducing the threshold for the nuclear reaction. This mechanism offers a promising alternative perspective for catalyzing p-$^{11}$B fusion, and also suggests a potential ignition pathway.