Three-body Reaction Dynamics in Dissociative Recombination

Abstract

Abstract. Dissociative recombination of molecular ions with electrons is the most important neutralising process in plasmas cold enough to contain molecules. The basic features and principles describing recombination of diatomic molecular ions are now reasonably well characterised and understood. However, recombination of polyatomic ions is much less well understood. Over the last six years, experiments carried out at ion storage rings have shown that tri-atomic molecular ions tend to break up into three atoms upon recombination with free electrons. The question of how this break-up occurs has started to be investigated at ion storage rings using particle-imaging techniques. In this presentation, the imagine technique used in these experiments will be discussed together with results obtained from studies of H 2 O ¤ , NH ¤ 2 and CH ¤ 2 . Finally, the use of this technique to study the dissociative recombination of more complex polyatomic ions, for example D 5 O ¤ 2 , will also be discussed.