A team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now discovered that nuclear fusion processes can be significantly enhanced by extremely strong and rapidly changing pulsed electric fields.
Nuclear fusions, such as those that take place in the sun, are made possible by the quantum-mechanical tunnel effect. This has the effect that similarly charged particles can overcome their mutual repulsion and thus the potential barrier and thus fuse, even if their energy is not actually sufficient for this.
Pulsed electric fields that change rapidly over time can ensure that the particles are, figuratively speaking, pushed out of the potential barrier and thus tunnel more easily. However, the systems available today are not yet fully capable of generating such fast and strong "artificial lightning".
However, there is a possible way out: the electric field of an alpha particle flying fast and, above all, close to the proton can act like such a pulsed electric field and strike so strongly that the proton can tunnel through the potential barrier of boron-11 and trigger the fusion reaction. Alpha particles with the necessary pulse energy are actually produced in the proton-boron reaction, but can also be injected from outside.
