Dissociative recombination of large molecular ions

The theory of indirect dissociative recombination (which occurs through the excitation of rotational or vibrational degrees of freedom in the molecular ion) is developed in order to explain the very large rates measured for the recombination of polyatomic molecular ions. Theoretical upper bounds on the rates are established. The formulation simplifies considerably for loosely-bound aggregates, and it is thus possible to explain the dependence upon n of the observed rates for H 3 O + (H 2 O) n .