The thing about the laser pulses of .4 joule would be that the energy content is small relative to any nuclear process, even if tightly focused. The laser energy affects the electrons such as to cause a rapid migration out of the illuminated spot. The relatively massive protons, bereft of the electron’s charge shielding, now strongly repel one another. It generates a repulsive driven explosion.
The cluster fragment’s velocity allows calculation of the length of the hydrogen bonds, given the mass of the fragments. This is described as taking place in a special dense form of hydrogen of unusually short bonds, which were found to correspond to an energy of about 650 eV.
The elephant in the room is that some of the debris fragments coming forth from the experiment are particles composed of quarks that are not present in the hydrogen’s proton nucleus. There are no antiquarks or strange quarks in normal matter hydrogen, but the different flavors of Kaons detected in the experiment are formed from the combined pairing of them.
The only place to observe Kaons are from cosmic ray particle showers in the atmosphere, or particle accelerator collision experiments such as at the Brookhaven National Lab. These Kaon are created by high energy (velocity) collisions. How they are otherwise created is the essential question.
I think there is more than one elephant in that room. What frustrates me no end is that the intellects that stand the best chance of figuring out what is going on refuse to even entertain the notion that “something different” is going even happening....
Is it safe to say that kaons are proof that it’s a nuclear reaction, similar to finding neutrons?