A novel approach to proton-boron-11 fusion
Hong-Yi Wang · Yu-Qi Li · Qian Wu · Zhu-Fang Cui
Proton-boron-11 (p-B) fusion is a highly attractive aneutronic pathway for clean energy production, offering abundant fuel, negligible neutron activation, and the potential for direct energy conversion of charged particles. However, its practical implementation is severely hindered by the extremely high Coulomb barrier, necessitating ignition temperatures far beyond those of conventional deuterium-tritium reactions. In this work, we propose a novel approach to enhance the low-energy fusion cross-section by introducing a negative muon (). Instead of relying on the thermal equilibrium formation of a muonic molecule, we investigate a kinetic scenario in which a muonic hydrogen atom (p) is formed first and subsequently bombarded with a B nucleus. We quantitatively characterize the dynamic screening of the proton's Coulomb field by the tightly bound cloud, the resulting modified Coulomb potential substantially lowers the effective barrier at intermediate separations. We also evaluate the penetrability, reaction cross-section, and reactivity of the p-B system, the results indicate that the inclusion of enhances the tunneling probability by several orders of magnitude at incident energies below 100~keV, thereby significantly reducing the threshold for the nuclear reaction. This mechanism offers a promising alternative perspective for catalyzing p-B fusion, and also suggests a potential ignition pathway.