Time-Dependent Cooling Efficiencies


The non-equilibrium cooling efficiencies are suppressed, compared to CIE cooling, because the gas remains "over-ionized" as it cools, and the densities of the coolants that are most effective at each temperature are reduced. The more highly ionized species that remain present at each temperature are less efficiently excited by the cooler thermal electrons. In addition, the distinct peaks and features that appear for CIE are smeared out, due to the broader ion distributions that occur for non-equilibrium cooling.

Download tables of time-dependent cooling efficiencies versus temperature: (or get equilibrium cooling efficiencies)

Isochoric Cooling Isobaric Cooling
html,  ASCII (text). html,  ASCII (text).



Online Tool:
Calculate cooling efficiency at user-supplied temperature:

Get Cooling Efficiency of Z= times solar metallicity
gas, at T= K, assuming:
   Collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE).
   Time-dependent cooling.

  

This will take a minute.






















Constructed: June 2006, Orly Gnat