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arXiv · 2512.06212

Enhanced nuclear fusion in the sub-keV energy regime

Micah. E. Karahadian·Matthew Colborne·Arun Persaud·Thomas Schenkel·Jeremy N. Munday
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Abstract

Nuclear fusion requires overcoming or traversing a repulsive Coulomb barrier of hundreds of kiloelectronvolts, rendering the probability of fusion at sub-keV energies vanishingly small. Yet in condensed matter, the electronic and structural environment of reacting nuclei can profoundly alter fusion rates. Here we demonstrate that deuterium-deuterium fusion within metallic foils exhibits a pronounced enhancement and reaction yield plateau below energies of 2.5 keV- contrary to the expected exponential suppression with decreasing energy. Using a dual-chamber platform that combines electrochemical deuterium loading with ion-beam bombardment, we show that fusion yields in palladium and titanium hydrides are enhanced by over 10^18 compared to theoretical bare-nucleus fusion rates. These results demonstrate that access to low-energy fusion processes can be governed by materials degrees of freedom. This materials-driven fusion regime establishes a reproducible, tunable framework for studying and ultimately engineering nuclear reactions in solids. While the reaction rates reported here are low, these insights into materials-modulated fusion processes offer a potential foundation for understanding how condensed-matter environments could influence future fusion-energy concepts.

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Micah. E. Karahadian, Matthew Colborne, Arun Persaud, Thomas Schenkel, Jeremy N. Munday. 2025-12-05. Enhanced nuclear fusion in the sub-keV energy regime. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06212

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