10min:

PAUL B. RIMMER, ERIC HERBST, Physics Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43202.

Recent observations of H₃⁺ abundances in diffuse clouds have suggested a higher value for the cosmic ray ionization than has been generally accepted. We provide a model that takes into account a variable cosmic ray ionization, and show that it produces H₃⁺ abundances close to the observed values. We also apply this method to an IR-dense cloud model.