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Efficiency Of Molecular Hydrogen Formation On Silicates, Gianfranco Vidali, Valerio Pirronello, Ofer Biham, Chi Liu, Lyiong Shen

Physics - All Scholarship

We report on laboratory measurements of molecular hydrogen formation and recombination on an olivine slab as a function of surface temperature under conditions relevant to those encountered in the interstellar medium. On the basis of our experimental evidence, we recognize that there are two main regimes of H coverage that are of astrophysical importance; for each of them we provide an expression giving the production rate of molecular hydrogen in interstellar clouds.