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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Dissociation energies of molecular hydrogen and the hydrogen molecular ion
Y P Zhang1, C H Cheng, J T Kim
1Physics Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, USA.
Abstract:
We have obtained improved values for the dissociation energies of molecular hydrogen and its ion by using a high-resolution pulse-amplified laser to probe the second dissociation limit. The onset of the vibrational continuum is observed by state-selective detection of the atomic products of dissociation, and several auxiliary measurements link the results to the ground state. The dissociation energies are accurate to 0.010-0.026 cm(-1), improving previous measurements by a factor of 3-7. Agreement with ab initio calculations is good for H2, D2, and their ions, but not for HD and HD+.
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