Emission and recombination coefficients for hydrogen with kappa-distributed electron energies

TL;DR

This paper provides a new dataset of hydrogen emission and recombination coefficients calculated using a kappa-distribution of electron energies, extending previous Maxwell-Boltzmann-based data for applications in cold, thin plasmas like planetary nebulae.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive dataset of hydrogen coefficients based on kappa-distributions, including interactive tools for data probing, which was not available in prior Maxwell-Boltzmann-based datasets.

Findings

Dataset covers a range of densities, temperatures, and kappa values.

Provides tools for interpolating data between computed points.

Enhances modeling accuracy for astrophysical plasmas.

Abstract

We provide a data set of emission and recombination coefficients of hydrogen using a kappa-distribution of electron energies rather than the more traditional Maxwell-Boltzmann (MB) distribution. The data are mainly relevant to thin and relatively cold plasma found in planetary nebulae and H II regions. The data set extends the previous data sets provided by Storey and Hummer which were computed using a MB distribution. The data set, which is placed in the public domain, is structured as a function of electron number density, temperature and kappa. Interactive fortran 77 and C++ data servers are also provided as an accessory to probe the data and obtain Lagrange-interpolated values for any choice of all three variables between the explicitly computed values.