Corrections to linear mixing and nuclear reaction rates

A. I. Chugunov1, H. E. DeWitt2
1Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, 26 Politekhnicheskaya st., Saint-Petersburg, 194021 Russia
2Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P. O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94550, USA

We analyze the enhancement factors of nuclear reaction rates in binary mixtures. This factor is directly coupled with plasma screening function at zero separation, Hjk(0), for two ions (of types j=1,2 and k=1,2). The Hjk(0) is estimated by two methods: (1) from the difference of Helmholtz Coulomb free energies at large and zero separations; (2) by fitting the Widom expansion of Hjk(x) in powers of interionic distance x to Monte Carlo data. These methods are shown to be in good agreement. For illustration, we analyze the plasma screening enhancement of nuclear burning rates in dense stellar matter.


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