Radiation correction to astrophysical fusion reactions and the electron screening problem

Abstract

We discuss the effect of electromagnetic environment on laboratory measurements of the nuclear fusion reactions of astrophysical interest. The radiation field is eliminated using the path integral formalism in order to obtain the influence functional, which we evaluate in the semi-classical approximation. We show that enhancement of the tunneling probability due to the radiation correction is extremely small and does not resolve the longstanding problem that the observed electron screening effect is significantly larger than theoretical predictions.

Comments: 9 pages, 1 eps figures