The reaction between H3
+ and CO is important
in understanding the H3
+ destruction mechanism
in the interstellar medium. In this work, thermal rate coefficients
for the H3
+ + CO and D3
+ + CO reactions are calculated using ring-polymer molecular dynamics
(RPMD) on a high-level machine-learning potential energy surface.
The RPMD results agree well with the classical molecular dynamics
results, where nuclear quantum effects are completely ignored, whereas
the agreement between the RPMD results and the previous quasi-classical
trajectory is good only at low temperatures. The calculated [HCO+]/[HOC+] product branching ratios decrease as the
temperature increases, and the product branching is exclusively determined
by the initial collisional orientation, which governs the formation
of an ion–dipole complex, H3
+···CO
or H3
+···OC, that dissociates
into H2 + HCO+ or H2 + HOC+, respectively, via a direct mechanism. However, the contribution
of the indirect mechanism via the rearrangement between H3
+···CO and H3
+···OC
increases as the temperature increases, although its absolute fraction
is small.