Measurement of astrophysical S-factors and electron screening potentials for image reaction in ZrD2, TiD2 and TaD0.5 targets in the ultralow energy region using plasma accelerator

The present paper is devoted to the study of the electron screening effect influence on the rate of image reaction in the ultralow deuteron collision energy range in the deuterated metals (ZrD2, TiD2 and TaD0.5). The ZrD2, TiD2 and TaD0.5 targets were fabricated via magnetron sputtering of titanium, zirconium and tantalum in gas (deuterium) environment. The experiments have been carried out using the high-current pulsed Hall plasma accelerator (NSR TPU, Russia). The detection of neutrons with energy of 2.5 MeV from the dd reaction was done with plastic scintillation spectrometers. As a result of the experiments, the energy dependences of the astrophysical S-factor for the dd reaction in the deuteron collision energy range of 2–7 keV and the values of the electron screening potential image of the interacting deuterons have been measured for the above targets: image; image; image. Our results are compared with the other published experimental and calculated data.