Phonon-bound nucleon pairs predicted by the Bohm-Staver relation

Abstract

Attention is drawn to recent observation of a fluid phase of hydrogen nucleii in transition metal hydrides. It is suggested that phonon exchange processes might be responsible for the phase transition since bound pair states, analogous to Cooper pairs, would possess the required mobility and might moreover render the phase transition energetically favourable. A generic formula for the ground state binding energy based upon the results of numerical calculations is presented and a special test of the theory is proposed.