The fusion of hydrogen isotopes promises abundant power at a time when fossil fuels are increasingly problematic. Billions have been spent on hot fusion, and NASA has recently validated low-energy nuclear fusion. Fusion ignition requires confinement of a critical concentration of reactants over time and sufficient translational kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier. Reactant structure generally informs reaction kinetics. The nonzero magnetic moment and unexpected radius-to-mass of the deuteron provide evidence that the deuteron is neither a point charge nor a sphere. The alternating quark model (AQM) posits the deuteron as a linear sequence of 6 alternating quarks producing an aspherical Coulomb barrier. AQM is a structural model of the atomic nucleus demonstrating near-perfect correlation (<i>r</i>(33)=.99, p<.001) with accepted RMS charge radii of stable nuclei through Ar-36. Within the model, quarks occupy average positions and the deuteron has a (-) down quark and (+) up quark on either end. Precession of quark charge explains the deuteron's nonzero magnetic moment, while the rotational radius of its 6-quark sequential structure explains its unusually high radius-to-mass. More importantly, d-d’ fusion is shown to depend on steric effects with a nearly 3-fold difference in Coulomb barrier height depending on whether fusing deuterons approach end to end (0.83 MeV) or antiparallel (0.36 MeV). Magnetic and electric fields within the reaction environment affect the deuteron’s orientation, and suboptimal orientation requires greater input energy to achieve ignition. Deuteron structure thus plays a critical role in fusion kinetics and reactor design. Protons and neutrons each contain three quarks. No consensus exists on the role of quarks in nuclear structure, and treating protons and neutrons as point-like particles has been sufficient to explain an enormous body of experimental results. The methodologies are quite complex and computationally intensive, however. AQM is a ball-and-stick model akin to molecular ball-and-stick models or Lewis dot structures. Simple algebra and trigonometry solve for stable structures through argon-36 based on average quark positions within equally-spaced alternating up/down quark sequences; resulting radius predictions correlate near perfectly with accepted RMS charge radii while explaining the erratic radius-to-mass below lithium-6 and the linear radius-to-mass above. Larger structures conform to an anisotropic cylindrical lattice of alternating nucleons arranged within stacked 6-nucleon rings and exhibiting shell-like periodicity. A complete shell comprises a duodectet of 12 valence nucleons. Structural periodicity is validated by a corresponding periodicity in nuclear magnetic moments and single-nucleon nucleosynthesis. A nuclides’ quark structure serves as a substrate in the steric selection of single-nucleon net nucleosynthesis in a way analogous to base pair selection in DNA replication. Products with contiguous alternating quark sequences are stable, and products without them are unstable. A sequence of alternating +2/3 and -1/3 charge (equivalent to up and down quark charge) set 0.84 fm apart (equal to the radius of the proton) demonstrates a Coulomb-like potential energy barrier as determined by a mathematical matrix employing Coulombs law.  Removing a single charge from such an alternating sequence of charges demonstrates a short-range attractive force that mimics quantum mechanical asymptotic freedom and quark confinement. Implications for the European Muon Collaboration effect are discussed.

Alternating quark nuclear structure affects Coulomb barrier height in H2-H2' fusion

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ACS Fall 2022

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