Universal temperature dependence of the ion-neutral-neutral three-body recombination rate

A classical approach based on hyperspherical coordinates is used to derive a first-principles formulation of the the ion-neutral-neutral three-body recombination rate, A+ + A + A → A2+ + A, in terms of the mass of the atom and its polarizability. The robustness and predictive power of our approach have been checked in comparison with experimental data of rare gas three-body recombination as well as previous theoretical frameworks, which need one or two atom-dependent fitting parameters. Thus, our approach is general and applicable to any ion-atom-atom system.