Exponential enhancement of nuclear reactions in a condensed matter environment

A mechanism that uses the environment to increase the probability of the nuclear reaction when a beam of accelerated nuclei collides with a target nucleus implanted in condensed matter is suggested. The effect considered is exponentially large for low collision energies. For t+p collision the mechanism becomes effective when the energy of the projectile tritium is below 1 KeV per nucleon. The gain in probability of the nuclear reaction is due to a redistribution of energy and momentum of the projectile in several 'preliminary' elastic collisions with the target nucleus and the environmental nuclei in such a way that the final inelastic projectile-target collision takes place with larger relative velocity, which is accompanied by the corresponding decrease of the center of mass energy. This increase of the relative velocity exponentially increases the penetration through the Coulomb barrier