Metagalactic Ultraviolet Background Tables for Calculating Diffuse Astrophysical Plasma Properties

TL;DR

This paper provides standardized UV background tables and tools to compare and generate ionization data for astrophysical plasma studies, aiding understanding of the circumgalactic medium.

Contribution

It offers reformatted UVB models in consistent units and a pipeline for generating ionization tables, facilitating direct comparison and analysis.

Findings

Standardized UVB model tables across multiple sources.

Tools for generating ionization tables for different UVB models.

Enhanced ability to compare UVB effects on plasma properties.

Abstract

In developing a deeper understanding of the Circumgalactic Medium, one feature that is poorly understood is the nature of the ultraviolet background (UVB) and its impact on observed column densities. A wide array of UVB models have been created over the years by many different authors, each based on the latest observational data available at the time. In addition to having a large variance between model properties, the formatting between released models is also inconsistent. This data release provides reformatted versions of several widely-used ultraviolet background models-Faucher-Gigu\`ere et al. 2009, Haardt and Madau 2012, Puchwein et al. 2019, and Faucher-Gigu\`ere 2020-such that each model is in the same units and thus can be utilized to directly compare these models over a wide redshift range. This release also includes code to run a 'cloudy_cooling_tools' pipeline to generate ionization tables for different UVB models.