On three-body effects and nuclear fusion

Abstract

Confined to small regions, quantum systems exhibit electronic and structural properties different from their free space behavior. In Coulomb 3-body problems, configurations of close proximity of identically charged particles are classically unstable. They however exist as excited quantum states in confined systems. Quantum control of such states might be useful to induce nuclear fusion. The difficult nature of the quantum control of these quantum collision states is discussed here, as well as a possible solution using a two-step nonunitary evolution process.