Nuclear Reaction Rates in Dense Plasmas

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in dense plasmas, the quantum tail in particle momentum distributions caused by collisions significantly increases nuclear reaction rates beyond traditional Maxwellian-based calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a quasiclassical approach to account for collision-induced spectral broadening affecting nuclear reaction rates in dense plasmas.

Findings

Quantum tail enhances reaction rates by orders of magnitude.

Spectral density shifts from delta function to Lorentzian shape.

Reaction rate calculations align with earlier theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We solve the quasiclassical problem of tunneling through an external potential barrier in a dense plasma, where the tunneling particles undergo simultaneous collisions with other particles in thermodynamic equilibrium. Under such conditions the spectral density of states available to the particle has a Lorentz shape, rather than the delta function, which leads to a quantum tail in the particle momentum distribution function. We show that, this tail indeed significantly alters the average nuclear reaction rates, which supports earlier suggestions. This rate can be many orders of magnitude higher than would be normally calculated by averaging over the Maxwell distribution of energies.