This revised and extended description of the Rydburg ion conjecture is my best efforts to explain the detailed mechanism consistent with all know facts as revealed by Rossi.
In the Rossi reactor, I believe that clusters of coherent and entangled Rydburg hydrogen condensate crystals are formed on the surface of a solid such as graphite. Such ions attain a long average lifetime due to the high pressure and temperatures maintained within the hydrogen envelope of the reaction vessel. This long lifetime is sufficient to permit the ions to drift across the hydrogen envelope. Once they reach the nickel oxide nano-powder affixed to the reaction vessel walls, a hybrid hydride reaction occurs with the highly the eroded nickel oxide surface layer. An alkaline metal with an electric low work function can catalyze the Rydburg cluster emissions especially from the surface of a carbon solid. In more detail, the formation of Rydburg hydrogen is most easily formed from the surfaces of carbon or metal oxides. These planar clusters have six-fold symmetry and contain 7, 19, 37, 61, or 91 atoms. These numbers are the so called magic numbers for closed-pack clusters. Under the assumption that the fusion of these variously sized Rydburg clusters is at the bottom of the Rossi reaction, this distribution in the number of protons based on Rydburg magic number could be the mechanism that produces the various light elements found in the nuclear ash of the Rossi reactor. In these Rydburg clusters, the electrons provide the main structure in which the ions are moving. The ion cores are embedded in a sea of electrons which shield the ions from each other as in an ordinary metal. Because they are quantum mechanically entangled, these multi-atom crystals of hydrogen behave as a single atom. These clusters are very long lived and grow increasingly ionized by atomic and electron impacts that come from the high pressure and temperature of the hydrogen envelope. More generally, these clusters behave and in fact mimic negatively charged hydrogen ions with sufficiently long lifetimes to enter into the lattice defects. These defects have been produced by hydrogen erosion of the nickel oxide nano-powder when the hydrogen gas was first loaded into the reaction chamber at reactor startup. After this adsorption step, these complex H- ions interact with the nickel atoms that form the walls of the lattice defect. It is possible that a number of these complex H- ions can be confined in the nickel lattice defect. In accordance with the Pauli Exclusion Principle and with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the conditions are created for replacing electrons of the nickel metal atoms with these complex entangled assemblages of hydrogen atoms, thereby forming metal-hydrogen complex atomic formations. So at the end of this absorption process, these complex H- ions are adsorbed into the lattice interstices, but adsorption at the grain edges, by trapping the negatively charged Rydburg ions into the lattice defects; replacement of an atom of the nickel metal lattice holes may also occur. This event can take place due to the fermion nature of these complex Rydburg H- ion; however, since H- ions have a very large composite atomic mass many times larger than an electron mass, they tend to penetrate very deeply into the nickel lattice structure of the nickel oxide nano-powder, and cause an emission of Auger electrons and of X rays. Thermal oscillations in the metal lattice tend to compress the large number of highly compacted hydrogen atoms which comprise the Rydburg-ion(s) causing a structural reorganization of subatomic particles and freeing energy by mass defect; a fraction of the protons of this assemblage of sequestered hydrogen atoms will carry this fusion reaction energy which expels them from the local of the reaction as individual protons, and can generate secondary nuclear reactions within immediately adjacent neighboring metal cores. To reiterate in more detail, the complex entangled super atom that has been formed by the metal atom capturing the Rydburg H- ion, in the full respect of the energy conservation principle, of the Pauli exclusion principle, and of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, is forced towards an excited status, and reorganizes itself by the migration of the Rydburg - ion towards deeper orbitals or levels, i.e. towards a minimum energy state, thus emitting Auger electrons and X rays during the level changes. The Rydburg - ion falls into a potential hole and concentrates the kinetic energy which was previously distributed evenly over the entire entangled volume of the entire Rydburg hydrogen crystal into a smaller volume whose radius is about 5x10e-15 m. This results in the fusion of the constituent hydrogen atoms into various light elements which form a light atomic weight ash and whose feedstock is solely hydrogen atoms. The secondary fusion process generates copper atoms whose feed stock is nickel atoms and protons expelled from the site of initial light element fusion during light element formation. The total Rydburg-ion mass is thousands of times more massive than the electron. This large mass and associated large negative charge effectively shields and reduces the electromagnetic resistance between the ion and the nickel core. This rapidly draws these two bodies much closer into a covalent bond than an electron can. The effective radius of the modified hydrogen is correspondingly smaller than a normal hydrogen atom. Because the nuclei are so close, the strong nuclear force is able to kick in and bind all constituent nuclei together. So at the end of this process, the Rydburg-ion is at a distance from the core that is comparable with the nuclear radius; in fact, in the fundamental status of the complex atom that is formed by adding the Rydburg- ion, due to its large mass that is far greater than the mass of the electron, the Rydburg - ion is forced to stay at such deep levels at a distance from the core that is comparable with the nuclear radius, in accordance with Bohr radius calculation. As explained above, owing to the short distance from the core, a process is triggered in which the hydrogen atoms that comprises the Rydburg - ion are fused into heavier elements and oftentimes expel constituent excess protons that are subsequently captured by the cores of the nickel atoms that form the surrounding lattice defect walls, with a structural reorganization and energy released by mass defect, similarly to what happens in the case of electron capture with structural reorganization and energy released by mass defect or in case of the loss of two electrons, due to their intrinsic instability, during the fall process towards the lowest layers, and eventually an expulsion of protons and nuclear reorganization reactions can occur with other neighboring nickel atom cores, said reactions detected as transmutations to the active core after the production of energy. This multi-leveled transmutation process accounts for the production of both the wide spectrum of light elements and a variety of heavy elements including copper and zinc. Rossi can only explain the production of copper as a proton fusion reaction but cannot account for the prolific production of many and various light elements. A compound negative particle complex of varied mass comprised of many hydrogen atoms is required to explain the production of many light elements in the Rossi ash besides copper as follows: 8 - Oxygen (component of nickel oxide) 9 - Fluorine (captured to form fluorides) 10 - Neon (outgased ?) 11 – Sodium (possible graphite catalyst) 12 - Magnesium 13 - Silicon (mentioned as ash) 14 – Phosphorus (possible graphite catalyst) 15 – Sulfur (mentioned as ash) 16 – Chlorine (mentioned as ash) 17 – Argon (outgased ?) 18 – Potassium (mentioned as ash) (possible graphite catalyst) 19 – Calcium (mentioned as ash) Whereas the limited explanation of a single proton/nickel fusion will have only produced copper as stated by Rossi.