Fig. 3: Dissociative recombination rate coefficients for D₂H⁺.

a Measured merged-beams DR rate coefficient α^mb at storage times 4–9 s (red markers) and 1000–1300 s (black markers). The blue solid line shows the theoretical rate coefficients weighted with the simulated state populations for 1000–1300 s of storage. The experimental error bars represent statistical 1-sigma uncertainties only, while the systematic uncertainty of the absolute scale is 20%. b Reduced merged-beams DR rate coefficients \(\sqrt{{E}_{{{{\rm{d}}}}}}\,{\alpha }^{{{{\rm{mb}}}}}\) for storage times of 1000–1300 s (black markers). The blue solid line depicts the theoretical rate coefficients weighted with the simulated state populations for 1000–1300 s of storage. The gray and brown lines show the individual population-weighted contributions of the lowest ortho- and para-states, respectively. c Plasma kinetic temperature rate coefficient α^k derived from the cold measurements (CSR), compared to previous measurements (TSR³⁷, Cryring³⁹, Afterglow⁴¹). The shaded areas around the CSR and TSR results represent the total (systematic and statistical) uncertainties of these measurements, which have been propagated through the conversion procedure Supplementary. For comparison, the blue line depicts the plasma kinetic temperature rate coefficient derived from the population-weighted theoretical calculations.