Cold Fusion Revived?

I must confess, I'm con-fused. Lots of hard math. Read it all - if you can.

The field of cold fusion (CF), the fusion of hydrogen in a metal lattice, as discoveredby Fleischmann and Pons, has been expanded to include the general class of nuclear reactions which can be initiated in low temperature environments, and named the field of low energy nuclear reactions (LENR)(1). A large number of peer reviewed papers and books have been published in this field (2-3-4-5-6-7). Extensive development continues, as do mysteries regarding various mechanisms of the experimentally well documented effects(8-9).

Any theory that is to describe LENR has to explain not only how the Coulomb barrier is breached, why high energy particles and gammas are not seen from hydrogen fusion reactions, and why the branching ratios are so skewed, but also why almost no signature, including heat, is seen corresponding to nuclear mass changes from heavy lattice element transmutation. It appears unlikely all these things can be simultaneously explained without the presence of one or more catalytic electrons in the mix which highly de-energize the fused nucleus. This is especially true of heavy element transmutation, which produces very little in the way of high energy signatures that could be expected from the quantity of events and the observed nuclear mass changes (10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20). If a nucleus is not highly energized to begin with, then there is no need to figure out how high energy products are absorbed by the lattice, a common problem to LENR theory. It has been proposed that all the above requirements can be met by electron catalyzed fusion via a process called deflation fusion (21-22). Deflation fusion is a process whereby a ground state electron bound close to a hydrogen nucleus for attosecond periods, but with small wavelength, the deflated state hydrogen, makes breaking the Coulomb barrier feasible. Though the deflated state of hydrogen exists briefly, it exists frequently. The electron kinetic plus potential energy remains at the energy of the electron in the chemical environment in which the hydrogen resides, i.e. the sum of kinetic plus potential energy is the same in both the deflated and chemical states, as they are degenerate forms of the same state.