Evidence for stimulated emission of neutrons in deuterated palladium

In order to study the effect of Palladium in cold fusion, metallic deuterated Pd samples have been irradiated with partly moderated Am/Be neutrons and the resulting neutron intensity has been measured by the FERMI apparatus, an efficient and sofisticated detector for moderated neutrons. Once subtracted the vessel + (empty) Pd effect measured in 'blank' runs, an excess of 13.0 ± 0.6 neutrons per sec. (≅ 4 % of the total measured rate) has been detected. Assuming 2.45 MeV energy for the neutrons emitted by the radiated sample, the resulting rate corresponds to several outgoing neutrons for every neutron impinging on the Pd-D sample. Similar measurements with Cadmium absorber gave lower effects. We don't observe any effect with gaseous deuterium. The underlying process can be interpreted as d-d fusion in a Pb-D lattice perturbed by neutrons. The excess, predominantly due to thermal incident neutrons, demonstrates that the Palladium lattice strongly increases the probability for d-d fusion even almost at rest. (author)