Re: low energy deuteron beams the answer?


Bret Cahill wrote:
> If you could deal effectively with just one or a few fusions, if you
> could precisely predict what would happen, at least a certain
> percentage of the time, on the single fusion scale maybe that would be
> the smart way to go.

Yes. Do you happen to know the typical or maximal possible current
density values of focused electron and proton beams? This would
indicate the average distance between deuterons in a deuteron beam with
particles moving in parallel at the same average velocity.
The hypothesis here is that the average distance between the
particles in the beam decreases at higher average velocities and that
there may be a small precentage of deuterons that would be close enough
to fuse in these cases. The rationale for this hypothesis, another
hypothesis, is that charge polarization in the deuteron increases the
transverse extension of the deuterons as well as the pinch effect to
make it more easy to focus the otherwise divergent beam.
I can see applying equal and opposite electrostatic dipoles on
opposite sides of the beam oriented to force deuterons that stray from
the beam axis to move closer to the axis where these forces would
cancel out. But I see that a focus ring between two anodes see for
example http://www.meko.co.uk/beam.shtml is a more usual way.

.