Dissociative recombination is part of the broader field of electron–molecule scattering, which dates back to the famous Franck–Hertz experiment in 1914 (Franck & Hertz 1914). There are also similarities between dissociative recombination and photodissociation, and being a reactive process, recombination can also be considered as branch of chemical reaction dynamics. It is not possible to give a comprehensive presentation of all these topics, or this book would take an encyclopedic format. Instead we will focus on the topics that are most closely related to dissociative recombination.

A broad overview of the entire field of atomic collisions, including electron–ion recombination, is given in McDaniel (1989) and McDaniel, Mitchell, and Rudd (1993). The theory of electron–atom and electron–molecule collisions has been covered in Khare (2002). Since the recombination of atomic ions is not covered in the present book, the reader is referred to Dunn et al. (1984), Graham et al. (1992), McDaniel, Mitchell, and Rudd (1993), Hahn (1997), and Phaneuf et al. (1999) for reviews of this topic. Edited volumes by Christophorou (1984a, b), Märk and Dunn (1985), Ehrhardt and Morgan (1994), and Becker (1998) cover well the development in electron–molecule collisions during the 1980s and 1990s. Review articles covering dissociative recombination are given in Chapter 1.