The Salpeter plasma correction for solar fusion reactions

¹ Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
² Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
³ Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
⁴ Department of Physics, University of California at Santa, Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Corresponding author: R. F. Sawyer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 1 August 2001
Accepted: 3 December 2001

Abstract

We describe five different ways of obtaining the Salpeter formula for the plasma corrections to fusion rates; this formula is valid at the center of the sun with insignificant errors (~percent). Several recent papers have obtained a variety of answers in conflict with this result. We analyse the arguments of these papers, identifying sources of the discrepancies in some cases, and pointing out internal inconsistencies in the arguments given in other cases.