The project will focus on quantifying nuclear reactions, such as the deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction at relatively low reaction energies, below 500 eV. At these low energies, known nuclear fusion processes lead to very low fusion reaction rates, so low that there is no reliable data in this regime today. In our project we will combine an electro-chemical cell with ion beams for deuterium loading and defect engineering of palladium. DD-fusion reactions will be excited by electro-chemcical loading directly, with <500 eV d+ ions and/or laser driven plasmons. We will quantify reaction rates with nuclear diagnostics, including detectors for neutrons and MeV-scale ions. A mass spectrometer will quantify low energy ions from hypothetical reactions that couple directly to the Pd lattice. Ex situ scintillation counting and mass spectrometry will track tritium and transmutation products. In our collaboration we integrate expertise in el-chem loading (Berlinguette, University of British Columbia), ion beams & nuclear detection (Schenkel, LBNL), laser-plasmon excitation (Munday, UC Davis). We aim to quantify low energy nuclear reactions for a series of well-defined experimental conditions. 

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