Dr Nicholas Thomson
About
My research project
Laser Assisted Nuclear FusionI am researching how lasers can be used to induce and improve nuclear fusion through the analysis of the quantum behaviour of two interacting nuclei.
Supervisors
I am researching how lasers can be used to induce and improve nuclear fusion through the analysis of the quantum behaviour of two interacting nuclei.
Publications
Deuterium-Tritium (D-T) fusion is a key to generating safe, clean and limitless energy on Earth in future fusion power plants. Its understanding at low collision energies is incomplete, as D-T fusion is a quantum tunneling process affected by resonances whose origin is linked to properties of not fully understood nuclear forces. Simplified quantum dynamical calculations of laser-assisted D-T fusion are presented, suggesting that laser-nucleus interaction can enhance the average D-T fusion probability by 7 − 70% at deep subbarrier energies using laser fields of intensity 10^27 − 10^29 Wcm −2 and photon's energy of 1 eV.