From: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Subject: Terry Test
Reply-To: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:31:01 GMT

Steve Jones reminds me that he worked with the bubble chamber here at Fermilab 
as a graduate student.  And that it was with a deuterium fill.  Douglas 
Morrison reminds me that he independently observed muon catalyzed fusion in 
bubble chamber film. (Apparently Alvarez saw it first.  Alvarez got to almost 
everything first.)  I assume, Steve, that you know about this as the muon 
catalysis expert.  So if we can make D-D fusion work with Terry Bollinger's 
terribly smashing bubbles, then bubble chambers are a way to go as a detector.  
We already know that they will work, thanks to Douglas Morrison.  

But Douglas was quick to tell me why there is not much sense looking at film 
of old Deuterium filled bubble chamber events.  I had the bubble chamber 
operation slightly wrong.  First the piston is expanded making the contents of 
the chamber "superheated" (even though it is liquid duterium).  Then a 
particle beam is passed through the chamber.  This produces trails of ions, 
which form the nucleation sites for bubbles.  After time for the bubble 
growth, the flash tube is fired to expose film.  So this mode of operation 
guarantees that all the pictures were taken on expanding bubbles.  Operating 
procedure was such, that ion tracks from fusion events from bubble collapse 
when the chamber was pressurized would have long since recombined if they had 
existed.  

So what to do?  We have to expand and compress the chamber at the same time so 
let's do it.  

Inside a plain water bubble chamber, we put a pressurized small container of 
D2O in a thin wall container.  This container is fitted with an ultrasonic 
probe - I actually have one designed for cell disintegration that could be 
used.  It could put 100 watts of sonic energy into a few cc container.  A 
little shaping of the ultrasonic probe would produce a near point source of 
bubbles inside the small container.  For operation, first the piston would 
expand the plain water (if beer works, so should plain water) chamber making 
it sensitive to tracks.  The shaped ultrasonic transducer would be fired, 
making a bubble.  After enough time for the ultrasonic formed bubble to 
collapse, and the track bubbles to grow, the flash tube would be fired to take 
a picture.  I think the D-D fusion products would make it through a pretty 
thick inner chamber.  

The whole thing would be relatively easy to build.  With D2O in the test cell 
and H2O in the bubble chamber we could operate at room temperature.  Later if 
an event was seen the whole thing could be redone with liquid D2 and H2 and the 
associated cryogenic problems.  We would not need to buy a camera and flash 
tube system right away, as we could sit with our noses up against the glass 
chamber wall looking to see an event.  Almost any source could be used for 
test, but a little patience would give a cosmic ray.  I would not worry too 
much about getting radiated until I saw a track or two.   

Why should you do it with a bubble chamber instead of setting up counters 
(radiation detectors)?  Well, one picture gets Terry (and possibly you) a 
ticket to Stockholm, where detector counts produce endless debates about 
background.  

Tom Droege

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