Enhanced deuterium-tritium fusion cross sections in the presence of strong electromagnetic fields

Abstract

We investigate deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion cross sections in the presence of electromagnetic fields with high intensity and high frequency. With the help of the Kramers-Henneberger (KH) transformation, we show that the corresponding Coulomb barrier penetrability increases significantly due to the depression of the time-averaged potential barrier. As a result, we find that DT fusion cross sections can be enhanced depending effectively on a dimensionless quantity ${n}_{\mathrm{d}}$, which equals the ratio of the quiver oscillation amplitude to the geometrical touching radius of the deuterium and tritium nuclei. For ${n}_{\mathrm{d}}=9$, we predict that the fusion cross section is almost five times the value in the absence of electromagnetic fields, which implies that the famous Lawson criterion might be relaxed to some extent.