Dissociative recombination of CH+ ions.

In recent studies of the formation of molecules in interstellar clouds, Solomon and Klemperer (1972) and Frisch (1972) were able to fit the observed ratios of CH+ and CH densities only with the assumption that the rate of dissociative recombination is extremely small. It is known that the rate for most diatomic molecules is relatively large, with the exception of H2+ and He2+ for which it is anomalously small. The present work explores the possibility that CH+ also has a low recombination rate. However, preliminary calculations yield a large rate of the dissociative recombination process, seemingly necessitating considerable revision of some recent models of interstellar clouds.