Dynamic Screening in Thermonuclear Reactions

Abstract

It has recently been argued that there are no dynamic screening corrections to Salpeter's enhancement factor in thermonuclear reactions, in the weak-screening limit. The arguments used were: 1) The Gibbs probability distribution is factorable into two parts, one of which, $exp(-β\sum e_{i}e_{j}/r_{ij})$ ($β=1/k_{B}T$), is independent of velocity space; and 2) The enhancement factor is $w=1+β^{2}e^{2}Z_{1}Z_{2}< ϕ^{2} >$ with ${< ϕ^{2} >}_{k}={< E^{2} >}_{k}/k^{2}$ and ${< E^{2} >}_{k}/(8π)=(T/2)[1-ε^{-1} (0,k)]$. We show that both of these arguments are incorrect.