Net Cooling Tables for Cosmological Simulations under Multiple UV/X-ray Background Models
Abstract
We present three sets of net cooling tables for cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, computed with CLOUDY 23.01 for optically thin gas in photoionization equilibrium with three different UV/X-ray background models. Following the element-by-element approach, and in a format compatible with existing tables, we tabulate cooling, heating, and net rates separately for hydrogen and helium over an extended range of helium mass fractions and for 13 heavy elements, together with hydrogen species fractions, electron abundances, and mean particle masses. For gas of Solar composition, the choice of UV/X-ray background has little impact on the net cooling rates at low redshift, but the results increasingly diverge towards high redshift, particularly in diffuse gas near thermal equilibrium. Compared with widely used previous tables, cooling times in this regime differ by up to an order of magnitude at z ≳ 4.6, and the calculations disagree on whether the gas undergoes net cooling or heating over nearly 10% of the diffuse density-temperature plane at z ≈ 8, corresponding to the intergalactic medium. These trends persist for gas composed exclusively of hydrogen and helium. The tables provide a consistent framework for assessing the impact of the radiation background on gas cooling in cosmological simulations.
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BibTeX
@misc{federico2026cooling,
title = {{Net Cooling Tables for Cosmological Simulations under Multiple UV/X-ray Background Models}},
author = {Laura Di Federico and Klaus Dolag and Ildar Khabibullin and Luca Sala and Geray S. Karademir and Milena Valentini},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06360},
eprint = {2611.06360},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06360},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Net Cooling Tables for Cosmological Simulations under Multiple UV/X-ray Background Models
AU - Laura Di Federico
AU - Klaus Dolag
AU - Ildar Khabibullin
AU - Luca Sala
AU - Geray S. Karademir
AU - Milena Valentini
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06360
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06360
AB - We present three sets of net cooling tables for cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, computed with CLOUDY 23.01 for optically thin gas in photoionization equilibrium with three different UV/X-ray background models. Following the element-by-element approach, and in a format compatible with existing tables, we tabulate cooling, heating, and net rates separately for hydrogen and helium over an extended range of helium mass fractions and for 13 heavy elements, together with hydrogen species fractions, electron abundances, and mean particle masses. For gas of Solar composition, the choice of UV/X-ray background has little impact on the net cooling rates at low redshift, but the results increasingly diverge towards high redshift, particularly in diffuse gas near thermal equilibrium. Compared with widely used previous tables, cooling times in this regime differ by up to an order of magnitude at z ≳ 4.6, and the calculations disagree on whether the gas undergoes net cooling or heating over nearly 10% of the diffuse density-temperature plane at z ≈ 8, corresponding to the intergalactic medium. These trends persist for gas composed exclusively of hydrogen and helium. The tables provide a consistent framework for assessing the impact of the radiation background on gas cooling in cosmological simulations.
ER -