THE

WIDOM-LARSEN THEORY OF COLD FUSION by Martin Bier January 2012 In 2006, Widom and Larsen formulated a theory to explain how, at low temperature, the nuclear fusion of a proton and a heavy metal nucleus could occur. The theory is currently the subject of much debate in the cold fusion community. Perspectives of physicists from outside the cold fusion field appear to not be part of the debate. What follows is such a perspective. 1) The Problem In the middle of the 20th century, nuclear physics was one of the most active areas within physics. It was not only the technology that was developed for nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants. Newly acquired insights in the behavior of atomic nuclei also led to an understanding of the evolution of stars and of the universe. When, in 1989, Pons and Fleischmann held their legendary press conference, nuclear physics was in many ways a finished project. Theory and experiment were in agreement. Physicists knew what was possible and what was not. The details were left to engineers. There was no nuclear-physics-theory to explain the experimental results of Pons and Fleischmann. A number of theoreticians obliged and started to construct models to explain the alleged cold nuclear fusion. Defkalion Green Technologies is a company that intends to commercially develop cold fusion technology for everyday use. On its websitei the company claims that "quantum tunneling"ii is the mechanism behind cold nuclear fusion. However, it can be easily derived and computed that this can not be the case. Suppose you have a particle with kinetic energy E and an energy V is required overcome a barrier. In case of nuclear fusion, V is the energy that is necessary to "beat" the electrostatic repulsion (often called Coulomb repulsion) of positively charged atomic nuclei. Suppose V is larger than E. According to classical physics the particle will then never overcome the barrier. Quantum tunneling is a surprising, but elementary and straightforward result in the theory of quantum mechanics. It tells us that it is actually possible for our particle to mount the barrieriii. Quantum tunneling is well understood and there is a lot of technology, like the scanning tunneling microscopeiv, that relies on it. The probability to tunnel decreases when the difference V-E is made larger. Even at 10,000 C, a proton has an average energy E of just about an electronvolt (eV) in its Brownian motion. The energy V that is necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion and make two protons or deuterons fuse is about a million electronvolt. With such a difference, the probability to tunnel through the barrier is negligible. Ultimately, that is not so bad for us - if tunneling were that easy, protons,

deuterons, and other atomic nuclei on our planet would fuse at large rates. The ensuing radioactivity would make life impossible. So all in all, "tunneling" can not be a viable explanation for the alleged cold fusion. In the Pons-Fleischmann setup and also in later setups where the occurrence of cold nuclear fusion was claimed, the presence of a metal lattice has been an essential ingredient. In the system of Pons and Fleischmann, a cathode made of palladium absorbs protons. A palladium lattice can actually concentrate protons very effectively in the spaces between the metal atoms- a liter of hydrogen gas at atmospheric pressure and room temperature can fit in a cathode of about 1 cm3 (1 cc). Already before 1989 this was well known. Cold fusion theorists have generally thought that the metal lattice assists the process by bringing the protons into close proximity to one another and to the metal atoms. Articles appear regularly in which it is attempted to make this hunch less vague and less qualitative. In the years since Pons and Fleischmann, some cold-fusion-experimentalists have claimed to have produced reactions like Ni + p Cu, i.e., nuclear fusion reactions whereby a heavy metal nucleus actually absorbs a proton to then become another elementv. In 2006 the very reputable European Physical Journal C published an article by Allan Widom and Lewis Larsenvi: "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces." The paper purports to explain how metal- proton fusion can occur at low temperature. The scientific mainstream largely ignored this article. But in the cold fusion community it became the subject of intense debate. There is no happy medium there - either you are for WL or you are against WLvii. What follows is a short explanation and critical evaluation of the theory. 2) Three Unlikely Mechanisms A free neutron is unstable and decays after, on average, 15 minutes. In the decay a proton, an electron, and a lot of energy (0.78 MeV) are released. The reverse reaction, e- + p+ n, could in principle take place: the electron then needs to hit the proton with more than 90% of the speed of light and it needs to hit it in just the right way. Especially that "hitting the right way" is an issue - the reaction has a very small so-called cross section. Accelerators can bring electrons to 90% of the speed of light. Nevertheless, nobody in a laboratory has ever succeeded in making an electron and a proton fuse. At room temperature, or even at the temperatures at the surface of the Sun (5000 K), the Brownian motion of protons or electrons cannot provide the energy required for the 90% of the speed of light. The first ingredient of the WL theory is a mechanism to get the high energy collisions. According to WL, the protons in a metal lattice concentrate on the surface of the metal. There they would be at an average distance from each other of about 0.5 (the radius of a hydrogen atom in the ground state). Such a "membrane" of protons that is stretched out across a few

square micrometers can, according the WL, vibrate like a drumhead. The electric field of the vibrating protons can presumably accelerate an electron to the required MeV energy. That protons would "organize" in a membrane is a bizarre idea. There are charged nuclei and electrons in the vicinity. You can not just ignore these. Furthermore, just because of the Brownian motion, the protons should move with a speed of about a kilometer per second. That these organized protons would whip up the electrons to almost the speed of light and then somehow solve the problem of the small cross sectional area, that makes it all the more bizarre. With the megavolt input into the proton-electron collision, one would expect that the allegedly formed neutron would, upon its creation, move with MeV, or at least keV, energy. The second ingredient of the WL theory is the idea that the neutron comes out of the reaction with a speed of almost zero. The neutron would, furthermore, be confined in the lattice because of the membrane of vibrating protons. The ultra low speed is necessary, because only a very slow neutron can be absorbed by an atomic nucleus. The final and third ingredient involves the decay of the metal nucleus after it has absorbed a neutron. The metal nucleus is assumed to emit an electron. Such decay generally involves a lot of energy and radioactivity. The energy should take the form a fast electron ( radiation) and a high energy photon ( radiation). The WL theory claims that both electrons and photons are rapidly intercepted by dense clouds of electrons inside the metal lattice. The energy would then rapidly thermalize and distribute. The net result of all of this is the absorption of a proton by an atomic nucleus without any Coulomb barrier ever having been in the way. An electron enters in the first step and is emitted in the last step. So the electron has effectively been a catalyst for the nuclear reaction. The first ingredient creates a MeV event in an eV environment. The second ingredient brings us back to the eV regime so the fusion can occur. The third ingredient accounts for the fact that no significant radioactivity is ever measured in the vicinity of the alleged cold fusion. 3) Conclusions The three ingredients of the WL theory are not derived from observations or from basic principles of physics. It is the set of hypothesized mechanisms that underlies the theory. For each of the three mechanisms, the truth is that there should be a lot of observable consequences if it were real. Effects should be manifest in astrophysics, in biophysics, in solid state physics, etc. If there were good irrefutable experimental evidence for any one of these three mechanisms, it would probably be worth a Nobel Prize. As yet, it is only in the case of the purported cold fusion that we can see these mechanisms at work - and then with all three of them in concert.

There are no independent indications that the proposed mechanisms in the WL theory are real. In nuclear physics, neutron decay and the aforementioned e- + p+ n reaction are categorized as manifestations of the so-called "weak interaction." Steven Krivit, who manages the influential New Energy Times website, and some others have gratefully embraced the WL theory. They see it as the explanation they have waited for and as a justification for getting rid of the tainted term "cold fusion." "It is not cold fusion, it is weak interaction," is the current mantra. A debate on whether absorption of an electron by a neutron is "fusion" or not, such a debate is a semantic debate and not a scientific one. For a defendant it can make a difference whether the same event is characterized as "murder" or as "manslaughter." But in physics, words do not change outcomes. A sense of dj vu surrounds the WL theory. In the middle of the 20th century, Immanuel Velikovsky was intent on interpreting ancient myths as true accounts: the parting of the Red Sea and Noah's Flood really happened and Velikovsky proceeded to claim that close encounters with other planets of our solar system were the actual causes of the extraordinary events. He argued that electromagnetic forces are able to make planets do things that seem inconsistent with known orbital mechanics. In the same spirit, twisted takes on quantum physics have, in the past few decades, been employed as "explanations" of psychic phenomena and homeopathy. Widom and Larsen operate within a tradition. They have manufactured a freak theory, just so that cold fusion may be factual. i http://www.defkalion-energy.com/ ii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling iii S. Gasiorowicz, Quantum Physics, Wiley (2003). iv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscopy v S. Focardi, V. Gabbani, V. Montalbano, F. Piantelli and S. Veronesi, Large Excess Heat Production in Ni-H Systems, Il Nuovo Cimento, Volume 111, no 11, page 1233 (November 1998), download for free on http://www.lenr- canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf vi Eur. Phys. J. C, Vol 46, pages 107-111, 2006, downloadable for free at http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0505026v1 vii see, for instance, the "comments" on http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml