There's an idea I want to try after I get my initial fusor up and running.
It is actually pretty simple. I want to somehow force the free roaming charged particles to follow a pre-determined path as they accelerate to the center of the device. In theory, this approach would work for both positive and negative particles; they would simply have reversed trajectories. Like you said in your post, most of the particles in our device simply miss each other.
Now, whether or not electrons would stimulate fusion directly is a murky question. My gut instinct is no. Fusion must by definition involve two nuclei. I think an interesting possibility might be strange new effects being observed. In certain conditions maybe the electron would pair tightly with the nucleus, forming a neutral-charge particle that fuses readily. Perhaps we learn that the neutron really is a proton paired with an electron. Perhaps it would be as simple as reforming the neutral atoms as they accelerate inwards to enhance fusion. Who knows? It is fun to speculate, though.
Created on Wednesday, January 10, 2001 4:05 PM EDT by Clay G Codner