The Role of Velocity Distribution in Cold Deuterium-Deuterium Fusion

Reaction rates from recent electrochemical fusion experiments have been found to be as many as seventy orders of magnitude larger than those obtained from simple calculations involving an extrapolated low-energy deuterium-deuterium (D-D) cross section and a sharp velocity distribution. However, if an appropriate Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution is used in place of the conventional sharp (mono-energetic) velocity distribution, the calculated reaction rate increases by as much as fifty to sixty orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the center-of-mass energy at which the D-D cross section is evaluated for given D-D energy is much larger than that used in the conventional calculations due to the higher energy components in the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. Finally, the above results are not significantly affected if a reasonable high-energy cutoff E_c is included in the velocity distribution.