Two Mechanisms of Recombination of Atomic Ions

We compare the dynamics of two elementary reactions of recombination of atomic ions, namely, of the termolecular process of two ions and the third body (1) and of the bimolecular interaction of an ion with the diatomic cluster (2) consisting of the second ion and the neutral atom. It is shown that, despite the fact that both processes yield the same products, the main dynamical characteristics of these processes differ. First of all this concerns the excitation function which confines recombination for (2) by a collision energy up to 2 eV. The opacity functions of both processes have different structures. The distributions of the product vibrational energy in both the processes exhibit a non-equilibrium character, while the rotational energy distributions are equilibrium.