Storage and recombination of atomic H in solid H2

Abstract

A phenomenological rate process theory is developed for the storage and rapid recombination of atomic hydrogen free radicals in a crystalline molecular hydrogen solid at temperatures in the range of about 0.1-4 K. It is shown that such a theory can account quantitatively for the recently observed dependence of the storage time on the storage temperature, for the maximum concentration of trapped H atoms, and for the time duration of the energy release in the tritium decay experiments of Webeler. The theory predicts that maximum atomic hydrogen concentrations of the order 10 to the 20th per cu cm are realizable for storage temperatures in the vicinity of 0.14 K.