Muonic Rydberg states in dense plasmas of inertial confinement interest

We investigate the atomic recombination of stopped muons in dense plasmas of potential μ-catalysis concern. It is shown that in addition to the usual two-body radiative μ-ion recombination R2 highlighting low excited states and moderate plasma temperature T, a novel three-body process R3 involving ion–ion correlations could deliver a contribution several order of magnitudes above R2, steadily increasing with atomic excitation and T. It thus...