A new mechanism is proposed for atomic recombination in plasmas, whereby the binding energy is carried away by a plasmon. It is suggested that this mechanism may compete with radiative and three-body modes in the case of recombination to sufficiently highly excited and perturbed states of hydrogen. A procedure for calculation of the transition rate is outlined in a model which treats the plasma oscillations by the Bohm-Pines canonical transformation and the atomic bound states by a second canonical transformation.

• Received 1 February 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.38.1624