Determination of the enhancement factor and the electron screening potential in the D ^(3He,p)4He reaction using TiD targets

The study of fusion reactions D (d , p) ³H , D (d , n) ³He , T (d , n) ³He , ³He (d , p) ⁴He , and D(3He,p)4He at astrophysical energies is of interest for both basic and applied physics. These studied provide information on electron screening of nuclear reactions that provide important information on the role of electrons in reactions induced by deuterons, tritons, and nuclei of helium isotopes that proceed in reactors. The D(3He,p)4He reaction was investigated at the pulsed plasma Hall accelerator (Tomsk) in the ³He ⁺ ion energy range E_He= 16 ÷ 34 keV (laboratory reference frame) with a step of 2 keV. The goal of this work was to determine experimentally the enhancement factor of the D(3He,p)4He reaction and the electron screening potential U_e using a TiD targets with Miller indices [111] and [100]. A strong impact of the target crystal structure on reaction enhancement factor was discovered. We believe that solid-state effects make the largest contribution to the behavior of the enhancement factor D(3He, p)4He of the reaction as a function of energy. One of these effects is the particle channeling in crystal structures. An unexpected increase of the enhancement factors for the D(3He, p)4He reaction in the energy range 16 ÷ 22 keV probably indicates the emergence of some new mechanism that increases the yield of the reaction with lowering energy.