We present the first quantitative study of the screening potential and the effective cross section for thermonuclear reaction in dense plasmas relevant to the inertially confined fusion experiments and the interior of main-sequence stars. It is shown that the enhancement of the thermonuclear reaction rate due to strong Coulomb correlations has a considerable effect in such a dense plasma.

• Received 16 January 1984

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.29.2033