Page 44 - Summer 2006

Role of acoustics in energy focusing phenomena
Continued from page 40
cavitation will provide a route to fusion is provided by the observation that SL enjoys a big parameter space. For instance in the water hammer arrangement7 the integrated light emission has been scaled up by a factor of 1 million as shown by the photo of a single such flash in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Single flash of light emitted by a collapsing bubble of xenon gas in a ver- tically excited vibration.
Fig. 2. Barometer light emitted where the Hg meniscus scrubs against the ascending glass wall of a cylinder rotating about the horizontal axis.
In the 1930’s the well known phenomenon of friction- al electricity formed the basis for the prediction of SL. A realization of frictional electricity that goes back to Picard’s “barometer light” of 1676 is shown in Fig. 2. Here the scrubbing of the Hg meniscus against the ascending wall of a glass tube with a rotational velocity of 1 mm/sec around its horizontal axis generates picosecond electrical dis- charges where the electrons are accelerated to over 1% the
8
speed of light. The red line is light emission from the
excited states of neon gas in the cell.
Can ripping mercury off a dielectric surface create even
more energetic emissions where electrons are accelerated to
x-ray energies? Evidence that this may be possible comes
from reports of just such observations when mica is frac-
9
tured. This work has not been independently reproduced,
possibly because of its timing and context relative to “cold fusion.” After all, if a process delivers enough energy to accel- erate electrons to 10’s of keV then the delivery of that energy to individual ions will meet conditions for nuclear fusion if, of course, the appropriate ion such as deuterium is employed. That thermal gradients in a cubic centimeter size crystal can lead to x-ray emission has actually been known and patented and reproduced since the 1970’s.10 This effect is most prominent in ferroelectric crystals. These materials have an enormous spontaneous polarization. In fact freshly made lithium niobate has a spontaneous polarization of 70 μC/cm2 which is equivalent to an internal electric field of about 107 V/cm! In an uncontrolled environment stray charges attach to the surface and cancel the intrinsic field of the crystal. But by heating [or cooling] the crystal in a vacu- um the dependence of spontaneous polarization on temper- ature creates an unbalanced charge on the surface. Typically tens of degrees creates a field of 100 keV. If fractured mica really makes x-rays then it is likely due to the appearance of similar surface charges at the cleaved surfaces.
Now if a modestly heated cubic centimeter crystal makes 100-keV x-rays then configuring the crystal so as to deliver this energy to a deuterium ion should generate nuclear fusion. This has been achieved11 via mounting a 100 nm wide tungsten tip on the crystal [Fig. 3]. Neutral deuterium molecules that drift into the region of the tip are dissociated and ionized by the huge electric field. If the crystal is oriented so that the field is positive then the
Fig. 3. Lithium iobate crystal mounted on a heater/cooler. A tungsten tip is attached to a copper electrode that is fixed to the surface of the crystal.
42 Acoustics Today, July 2006