Is Nuclear fusion possible at room temperature with high preassure?

[jms4]

TL;DR Summary

If it is theoretically possible to compress hydrogen to core of the sun pressures at normal room temperature and nuclear fusion is possible

If it is theoretically possible to compress hydrogen to core of the sun pressures at normal room temperature (practically impossible), the molecules become so close to each other that they could fuse at room temperature without the need of creating millions of degrees kelvin.

 

[berkeman]

Summary:: If it is theoretically possible to compress hydrogen to core of the sun pressures at normal room temperature and nuclear fusion is possible

If it is theoretically possible to compress hydrogen to core of the sun pressures at normal room temperature (practically impossible), the molecules become so close to each other that they could fuse at room temperature without the need of creating millions of degrees kelvin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion

 

[mfb]

You'll need a much higher density than the core of the Sun. So dense that electron degeneracy pressure will be huge. You would try to form something like a super-compact black dwarf. This is probably more difficult to achieve than forming a new star. Certainly not something you'll do on Earth.

Muon-catalyzed fusion happens at room temperature, but not because of a high pressure.

@berkeman: That's not answering the question.

 

[PAllen]

Well, compressing starting at room temperature to sun core pressures will raise the temperature enormously. I have no idea (quantitatively) how much, and whether it would be enough to start fusion of e.g. deuterium/tritium. Just pointing out that starting at room temperature and ending at room temperature are completely different states.

 

[mfb]

You would need to cool it during the compression process, of course. Otherwise you replicate the star formation, which does heat up the core enough to start fusion.

 

[snorkack]

Not room temperature, but protium (and deuterium) at just a few thousand kelvins and Sun core pressures (and therefore much more than Sun core densities) is common and easily acquired in nature.

Just drop interstellar gas on surface of a white dwarf or a neutron star. Slowly, so that any heat from infall itself is immediately radiated away from the thin surface layer.

How thick layer of hydrogen on top of a neutron star would have, at its bottom, Sun´ s core pressure?
At which density and low temperature does the lifetime of deuterium to fusion
d+p=³He
drop to 10 Gyr?

 

[cmb]

Yes, it is called pycnonuclear fusion, at least that is the term coined by AGW Cameron in his 1959 paper on the subject.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1959ApJ...130..916C/abstract

A pycnonuclear regime is predicted to occur in crystalline solids at very low temperature, where the ions perform zero-point quantum mechanical oscillations around their equilibrium position. Pycnonuclear regimes may be responsible for Carbon combustion in white-dwarf stars.

The plasma parameter,

, needs to be over

>170. This is very dense.