Nuclear fusion catalyzed by doubly charged scalars: Implications for energy production

Abstract

A number of popular extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics predict the existence of doubly charged scalar particles $X^{\pm \pm }$. Such particles may be long-lived or even stable. If exist, $X^{--}$ could form atomic bound states with light nuclei and catalyze their fusion by essentially eliminating the Coulomb barrier between them. Such an $X$-catalyzed fusion ($X$CF) process does not require high temperatures or pressure and may have important applications for energy production. A similar process of muon-catalyzed fusion ($\mu$CF) has been shown not to be a viable source of energy because of the sticking of negative muons to helium nuclei produced in the fusion of hydrogen isotopes, which stops the catalytic process. We analyze $X$CF in deuterium environments and show that the $X$-particles can only stick to ${}^6$Li nuclei, which are produced in the third-stage reactions downstream in the catalytic cycle. The corresponding sticking probability is very low, and, before getting bound to ${}^6$Li, each $X$-particle can catalyze $\sim 3.5\cdot 10^9$ fusion cycles, producing $\sim 7\cdot 10^4$ TeV of energy. We also discuss the ways of reactivating the $X$-particles from the Coulomb-bound (${}^6\mathrm{Li}X$) states, which would allow re-using them in $X$CF reactions.

arXiv commentRevTeX, 17 pages,3 tables. v3: Note on recent ATLAS results on events with anomalously large ionization energy loss and their interpretation in terms of charge-2 long lived particles by Giudice et al. added; references added; supplemented material turned into appendices. v4: minor typos corrected

References in corpus (26)

• The Minimal Moose for a Little Higgs
• What is the lowest possible reheating temperature?
• Searching for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider
• Particle physics catalysis of thermal Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis as a Probe of New Physics
• Stau-catalyzed ${}^6$Li Production in Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Dark matter with invisible light from heavy double charged leptons of almost-commutative geometry?
• Primordial Deuterium after LUNA: concordances and error budget
• Stability of Few-Charge Systems in Quantum Mechanics
• Probing 3-3-1 Models in Diphoton Higgs Boson Decay
• Doubly Charged Higgs Boson Production at Hadron Colliders
• Doubly-charged particles at the Large Hadron Collider
• Searching for doubly charged Higgs bosons at the LHC in a 3-3-1 Model
• {Once more about astrophysical $S$ factor for the $\alpha +d\to {}^6\mathrm{Li}+\gamma$ reaction
• Probing Doubly and Singly Charged Higgs at $pp$ Collider HE-LHC
• Thermonuclear fusion rates for tritium + deuterium using Bayesian methods
• Phenomenology of a lepton triplet
• Search for anomalously heavy isotopes of helium in the Earth's atmosphere
• Astrophysical S-factors, thermonuclear rates, and electron screening potential for the ${}^3$He(d,p)${}^4$He Big Bang reaction via a hierarchical Bayesian model
• Two-electron atoms, ions and molecules
• Production, Collection and Utilization of Very Long-Lived Heavy Charged Leptons
• Detecting long-lived multi-charged particles in neutrino mass models with MoEDAL
• The $\alpha +d\to {}^6\mathrm{Li}+\gamma$ astrophysical $S$-factor and its implications for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Review on Effects of Long-lived Negatively Charged Massive Particles on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Leptonic Scalars and Collider Signatures in a UV-complete Model
• Prospects of searches for long-lived charged particles with MoEDAL

Cited by in corpus (2)

• dE/dx from boosted long-lived particles
• Long-lived doubly charged scalars in the left-right symmetric model: catalyzed nuclear fusion and collider implications