Checking the Salpeter enhancement of nuclear reactions in asymmetric mixtures*

We investigate the plasma enhancement of nuclear reactions in the intermediate coupling regime using orbital free molecular dynamics (OFMD) simulations. We study mixtures of H-Cu and H-Ag as prototypes of weakly and strong coupling limits due to the charge asymmetry. Of particular importance, is the partial ionization of Cu and Ag and the free electron polarization constitutive of OFMD simulations. By comparing a series of OFMD simulations at various concentration and constant pressure to multi-component hyper netted chain (MCHNC) calculations of effective binary ionic mixtures (BIM), we set a general procedure for computing enhancement factors. The MCHNC procedure allows to extend the range of the study to very low concentrations (5% or less) and to very high temperatures (few keV) unreachable by molecular dynamics simulations. Enhancement factors for nuclear reactions rates extracted from the MCHNC approach are compared with the Salpeter theory in the weak and strong coupling regime, and an interpolation is proposed.