The physics of antimatter induced fusion and thermonuclear explosions
The possibility of using antihydrogen for igniting inertia l confinement fusion pellets or triggering large-scale thermonuclear ex plosions is investigated. The number of antiproton annihilations required to start a thermonuclear burn wave in either DT or Li2DT is found to be about 10 21 /� 2 , where � is the compression factor of the fuel to be ignited. We conclude that the financial and energy investments needed to produce such amou nts of antiprotons would confine applications of antimatter trigger ed thermonuclear devices to the military domain.
Antimatter weapons (1946-1986): From Fermi and Teller's speculations to the first open scientific publications
We recall the early theoretical speculations on the possible explosive uses of antimatter, from 1946 to the first production of antiprotons, at Berkeley in 1955, and until the first capture of cold antiprotons, at CERN on July 17-18, 1986, as well as the circumstances of the first presentation at a scientific conference of the correct physical processes leading to the ignition of a large scale thermonuclear explosion using less than a few micrograms of antimatter as trigger, at Madrid on June 30th - July 4th, 1986.
Two-dimensional gravitational anomalies, Schwinger terms and dispersion relations
Abstract We are dealing with two-dimensional gravitational anomalies, specifically with the Einstein anomaly and the Weyl anomaly, and we show that they are fully determined by dispersion relations independent of any renormalization procedure (or ultraviolet regularization). The origin of the anomalies is the existence of a superconvergence sum rule for the imaginary part of the relevant formfactor. In the zero mass limit the imaginary part of the formfactor approaches a δ-function singularity at zero momentum squared, exhibiting in this way the infrared feature of the gravitational anomalies. We find an equivalence between the dispersive approach and the dimensional regularization procedure. The Schwinger terms appearing in the equal time commutators of the energy momentum tensors can be calculated by the same dispersive method. Although all computations are performed in two dimensions the method is expected to work in higher dimensions too.