Dissociative recombination of H(3)(+): 10 years in retrospect

The dissociative recombination of [Image: see text] has been an intriguing problem for more than half a century. The early experiments on [Image: see text] during the first 20 years were carried out without mass analysis in decaying plasma afterglows, and thus the measured rates pertained to an uncontrolled mixture of [Image: see text] and impurity ions. When mass analysis was used, the rate coefficient was determined to be an uneventful value of about 10(−7) cm(3) s(−1), a very common rate coefficient for many molecular ions. But this was not the end of the story, not even the beginning of the end; it marked only the end of the beginning. The story I will tell in this article started about 10 years ago, when the dissociative recombination of [Image: see text] was approaching its deepest crisis. Today, owing to an extensive experimental and theoretical effort, the state of affairs has reached a historically unique level of harmony, although there still remains many things to sort out.