Recent measurements of the reaction d(d,p)t in metallic environments at very low energies performed by different experimental groups point to an enhanced electron screening effect. However, the resulting screening energies differ strongly for divers
host metals and different experiments. Here, we present new experimental results and investigations of interfering processes in the irradiated targets. These measurements inside metals set special challenges and pitfalls which make them and the data analysis particularly error-prone. There are multi-parameter collateral effects which are crucial for the correct interpretation of the observed experimental yields. They mainly originate from target surface contaminations due to residual gases in the vacuum as well as from inhomogeneities and instabilities in the deuteron density distribution in the targets. In order to address these problems an improved differential analysis method beyond the standard procedures has been implemented. Profound scrutiny of the other experiments demonstrates that the observed unusual changes in the reaction yields are mainly due to deuteron density dynamics simulating the alleged screening energy values. The experimental results are compared with different theoretical models of the electron screening in metals. The Debye-H{u}ckel model that has been previously proposed to explain the influence of the electron screening on both nuclear reactions and radioactive decays could be clearly excluded.
In antecedent experiments the electron screening energies of the d+d reactions in metallic environments have been determined to be enhanced by an order of magnitude in comparison to the case of gaseous deuterium targets. The analytical models describ
ing averaged material properties have not been able to explain the experimental results so far. Therefore, a first effort has been undertaken to simulate the dynamics of reacting deuterons in a metallic lattice by means of an ab-initio Hartree-Fock calculation of the total electrostatic force between the lattice and the successively approaching deuterons via path integration. The calculations have been performed for Li and Ta, clearly showing a migration of electrons from host metallic to the deuterium atoms. However, in order to avoid more of the necessary simplifications in the model the utilization of a massive parallel supercomputer would be required.
