FAQ

A full historical account deserves a whole blog post to itself, but in short we can say the following:

Nucleonics lies at the intersection of quantum dynamics, nanostructured materials and nuclear physics and is concerned with the interplay of the molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic scales.

Solid-state environments have long been considered rich in their dynamics. For the longest time, the atomic nucleus was considered as merely a passive observer - like a cork bobbing up and down in a pool of water. However, as early as the 1930s scientists showed that, at least in principle, the weakly connected atomic and sub-atomic scales could in fact influence each other (Breit 1937). Interest in such effects was accelerated by reports, in the late 1980s and 1990s, of experimental anomalies in metal-hydride systems (often dubbed cold fusion and LENR). While not all of those reports live up to our scientific standards, we believe that collectively they represent a body of formal and informal knowledge not to be ignored. Indeed this knowledge has since gone on to stimulate rigorous development in theory, materials and concepts which together define a scientific field.

Nuclear energy has enormous potential - the energy density of typical nuclear reactions, whether they be fission or fusion, is millions of times greater than fossil fuels. This means fewer resources for the same energy demand and no CO2 emissions to worry about.

The catch? For conventional nuclear power (typically relying on the fission of a uranium isotope) the reaction products give off harmful radiation for thousands of years and the reaction itself relies on a careful balance of a potentially explosive chain reaction. For fusion power, the reaction rate between hydrogen isotopes is so slow that temperatures 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun are required to achieve energy breakeven - no small feat.

New fields of study often emerge from the confluence of distinct areas that become increasingly relevant to one another. Integration of ideas then becomes feasible, leading to “cognitive and social unification out of many initially separate efforts” (Bettencourt et al. 2009).

This pattern applies to nucleonics as well. Here, we observe a confluence between proposed concepts, observed anomalies, theory, and materials design:

• Proposed concepts: The idea that nuclear reactions such as fusion might be affected by their solid-state environment.
• Reported anomalies: Thousands of papers report anomalous behaviour of hydrogen isotopes in various configurations.
• Theory: Modern computational tools now allow us to simulate interactions between nuclei and atomic lattices.
• Materials: Advances in nanotechnology make it increasingly feasible to engineer materials for nucleonics research.

Project IDA is the name of our GitHub presence (https://github.com/project-ida). IDA refers to Ida Noddack, a pioneer of nuclear science who was ahead of her time. You can read more about her here: https://nucleonics.org/who-ida and dig into the full historical account of Ida's story in a blog post written by one of our team Jonah.

Certain aspects of coherence are central to nucleonics, but incoherent dynamics also play a role.

One aspect of coherence that we do rely on is described in Dicke’s original paper on superradiance. In particular:

“This simplified picture [of jointly radiating molecules treated in isolation] overlooks the fact that all molecules are interacting with a common radiation field and hence cannot be treated as independent.”

This also applies to nuclei as described by Terhune and Baldwin in PRL:

“The usual assumption that each nucleus radiates independently of the states of other nuclei in the system is incompatible with the coupling of the nuclei through the common electromagnetic and phonon fields”

and has been demonstrated at room temperature via the acceleration of the decay of excited Fe-57 by Chumakov et al., in 2017. The same kind of coherence can also be used in resonance energy transfer (also known as excitation transfer), which in that context is known as supertransfer (see Loyd and Mohseni).

The nucleonics model described in much detail in our New Journal of Physics article -- especially in its extensive supplementary notes -- works with coherence times (phase alignment of nuclear states) on the order of 1 nanosecond, and we find that nuclear excitation transfer dynamics exceeding that threshold can occur under realistic experimental conditions. This is when delocalised Dicke states come into play, providing further acceleration of nuclear excitation.

Excitation transfer (also known as resonance energy transfer) is the process of moving energy from a donor system to a receiver system without the emission/absorption of radiation. Supertransfer is the acceleration of this process from the coherent coupling of many donors/receivers to a shared oscillator.

There are numerous examples of relevant excitation transfer dynamics at the atomic scale such as exciton diffusion at room temperature (e.g., photosynthetic systems, organic semiconductors, etc.). Accelerated excitation transfer (supertransfer) in engineered systems has been demonstrated by Park and colleagues in a 2015 Nature Materials paper (at the atomic scale and at room temperature).

At the nuclear scale, there is evidence from Chumakov et al. for accelerated decay (Dicke enhancement or superradiance) in an ensemble of Fe-57 nuclei coherently excited by an XFEL at room temperature. We are currently working on a paper to propose an adaptation of the Chumakov experiment, with a uniform magnetic oscillator mode, to demonstrate nuclear supertransfer as opposed to superradiance. Evidence for nuclear supertransfer is also seen in reported LENR anomalies but this proposed experiment will isolate the effect.

In 1989 Leggett & Baym published Can solid-state effects enhance the cold-fusion rate? where they calculated the upper bound cold fusion rate with the caveat that they exclude a coherent fusion mechanism across many deuteron pairs, which they deem unlikely. 

It's taken Peter Hagelstein about 30 years of persistent work to identify such a mechanism which can account for a wide range of nuclear anomalies in solid state. In this sense, Leggett & Baym did miss something, but it's understandable that they did.

You read read about this mechanism in the extensive supplementary notes of our recent New Journal of Physics article.

Electrons are incredibly important - they are what hold the nuclei together in a solid. They do this by effectively shielding the nuclei from one another so that they don't feel such a strong repulsion. This has the added benefit of making nuclear fusion easier in a process that's often called "electron screening"

Most theoretical descriptions of screening are in metals and have been developed to attempt to explain anomalously high fusion rates in low energy beam-target experiments (see e.g. Huke et.al). These models have had some success, but there are still discrepancies with experiments and a rigorous theory of the extremely low energy regime has yet to be agreed upon. Despite this, there appears to be wide consensus on the upper limit of screening effects e.g. in palladium  screening energies are limited to 350 eV.

For nucleonics models that describe nuclear excitation transfer, some reasonable level of screening is required, but the predicted fusion rate is largely insensitive to the specific screening energy above a modest level of screening.