A boost to low energy nuclear reactions from preliminary elastic collisions ( Carambole collisions )

In conventional nuclear experiments a beam of accelerated nuclei collides with a target nucleus that is surrounded by other nuclei in a molecule, or in condensed matter, or in plasma environment. It is shown that for low collision energies the nuclear reaction is strongly boosted by the environment. The effect originates from a chain of preliminary three elastic collisions which transform the projectile-target experiment into the one with colliding beams. Firstly, the projectile-target pair of nuclei undergo the elastic scattering in which the projectile shares its energy and momentum with the target nucleus. Then the projectile and target nuclei collide with different heavy nuclei from the environment. These later collisions change the velocities of the target and projectile nuclei and set them again on the collision course. Finally the same pair of nuclei collides inelastically, this time giving rise to the nuclear reaction. The increased energy of the target nucleus increases the relative velocity up to √ 2 times that results in drastic exponential increase of the probability to penetrate the Coulomb barrier and therefore sharply increases the likelihood of the nuclear reaction. Applications to the laser induced fusion are discussed.