Dissociative recombination of diatomics: do we understand product state branching?

摘要

In this contribution, rate coefficients and product branching results of a number of diatomic molecules containing oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, will be discussed. A picture based on the prevailing theoretical treatments will be given of dissociative recombination. The product branching results will be compared to purely empirical predictions based on statistical arguments. Although, detailed and quantitative predictions of rates as well as product distributions still require very laborious calculations, the comparisons presented in this paper seem to indicate that new qualitative information on diatomic molecules may be obtained in an intuitive fashion.