Fusion neutron and ion emission from deuterium and deuterated methane

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http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~tditmire/papers/TD74.pdf

Fusion neutron and ion emission from deuterium and deuterated methane
cluster plasmas

Experiments on the interaction of intense, ultrafast pulses with large
van der Waals bonded clusters have shown that these clusters can
explode with substantial kinetic energy and that the explosion of
deuterium clusters can drive nuclear fusion reactions. Producing
explosions in deuterated methane clusters with a 100 fs, 100 TW laser
pulse, it is found that deuterium ions are accelerated to sufficiently
high kinetic energy to drive deuterium nuclear fusion. From
measurements of cluster size and ion energy via time of flight
methods, it is found that these exploding deuterated methane clusters
exhibit higher ion energies than explosions of comparably sized neat
deuterium clusters, in accord with recent theoretical predictions.
From measurements of the plume size and peak density, the relative
contribution to the fusion yield from both beam target and
intrafilament fusion is discussed. © 2004 American Institute of
Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1632906#