Rotational effects in low energy dissociative recombination of diatomic ions

The effect of rotational interaction in the low energy dissociative recombination process of diatomic molecules has been explored for typical molecular ions (H-2(+), HD+, OH+ and NO+) which sample a large range of molecular masses. We show that rotation plays a role mainly for the indirect recombination process through bound Rydberg states, and for light molecules. When the direct process based on a strong electronic interaction is fast and dominating, rotational couplings can be safely neglected especially for heavier molecules like NO.