Nuclear Fusion in Collapsing Bubbles—Is It There? An Attempt to Repeat the Observation of Nuclear Emissions from Sonoluminescence

D. Shapira, M. Saltmarsh
2002 Physical Review Letters  
We have repeated the experiment of Taleyarkhan et al. [Science 295, 1868[Science 295, (2002] in an attempt to detect the emission of neutrons from d-d fusion during bubble collapse in deuterated acetone. Using the same cavitation apparatus, a more sophisticated data acquisition system, and a larger scintillator detector, we find no evidence for 2.5-MeV neutron emission correlated with sonoluminescence form collapsing bubbles. Any neutron emission that might occur is at least 4 orders of
more » ... e too small to explain the tritium production reported in Taleyarkhan et al. as being due to d-d fusion. We show that proper allowance for random coincidence rates in such experiments requires the simultaneous measurement of the count rates in the individual detectors.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.89.104302 pmid:12225196 fatcat:wvfbqtqdfbbnxkxnzefpbzvcqi