Three-body recombination in He + H + H*

Considerable progress has been made recently in the calculation of three-body recombination rates. Most of this effort, however, has focused on ultracold collisions, although a recent calculation has obtained a recombination rate at temperatures as high as 0.5 K [1]. We present our progress on a new method to calculate the three-body recombination rate to much higher energies using realistic potentials. This method diabatizes the adiabatic hyperspherical representation using physical arguments. We will illustrate the method for the astrophysically-relevant reaction He + H + H $\rightarrow$ H$_2$ + He. We hope this method enables tractable calculations at astrophysically-relevant temperatures as well. \\[4pt] [1] Y. Wang, J.P. D'Incao, B.D. Esry, arXiv:1012.0680 (2010)