Nuclear fusion from Coulomb explosions of deuterated methane clusters subjected to ultraintense femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

This paper reports that Coulomb explosions taken place in the experiment of heteronuclear deuterated methane clusters ((CD4)n) in a gas jet subjected to intense femtosecond laser pulses (170 mJ, 70 fs) have led to table-top laser driven DD nuclear fusion. The clusters produced in supersonic expansion had an average size of about 5 nm in radius and the laser intensity used was 3 × 1017 W/cm2.The measured maximum and average energies of deuterons produced in the laser–cluster interaction were 60 and 13.5 keV, respectively. From DD collisions of energetic deuterons, a yield of 2.5(±0.4) × 104 fusion neutrons of 2.45 MeV per shot was realized, giving rise to a neutron production efficiency of about 1.5 × 105 per joule of incident laser pulse energy. Theoretical calculations were performed and a fairly good agreement of the calculated neutron yield with that obtained from the present experiment was found.