EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF NUCLEAR REACTIONS IN DEUTERATED TITANIUM SAMPLES UNDER NON-EQUILIBRIUM CONDITIONS INDUCED BY TEMPERATURE VARIATION Dan Chicea Physics Dept., University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu (paper presented at ICCF8) ABSTRACT Several experiments of loading Titanium samples with Deuterium from the gas phase, of changing the temperature of the samples over a wide range and of monitoring the neutron emission were done. Neutron emissions in very low intensity bursts, still significantly above the background were recorded, revealing that low energy nuclear reactions in condensed matter can be produced with a very low rate, which occasionally can be high enough to become detectable. I. INTRODUCTION Since the first announcement [1], which stated that nuclear fusion of Deuterium nuclei occurred at low temperature without any external acceleration, experimental work to verify the statement and to investigate the processes has been done all over the world [2] - [5] in sophisticated and in poorly equipped laboratories as well. In order to verify that nuclear reactions occurred in condensed matter, nuclear radiation should be present; i.e. γ rays, charged particles or neutrons should be detected to a significantly high level during the experiment. In the experiments described hereafter, the neutrons, which are assumed to be produced in the nuclear reaction: MeV n He d d 27 . 3 3 + + = + (1) were searched for. In Eq. (1) the energy of 3.27 MeV resulting from the nuclear reaction is divided between the neutron and the 3 He nucleus; the neutron will have 2.45 MeV [6]. The experiment was focused on searching for neutrons and not the γ radiation or charged particles because the neutrons are less attenuated by the 2 cm thick stainless steel wall of the reactor used for loading the samples. II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP A non-spectrometric system, consisting of a BF 3 proportional counter (Nuclear Enterprise), an electronic counter and a printer was used for the fast neutron detection. In order to reduce the background produced by the natural 1.46 MeV γ line of the 40 K contained in concrete, a 5-cm thick Lead slab served as a ground shield for the experiments performed in the Nuclear Facility of I.T.I.M. Cluj - Napoca. The BF 3 detector, with a