Metagalactic Ultraviolet Background Tables for Calculating Diffuse Astrophysical 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.23544,
title = {Metagalactic Ultraviolet Background Tables for Calculating Diffuse Astrophysical Plasma Properties},
author = {Elias Taira and Claire Kopenhafer and Brian W. O'Shea},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.23544},
year = {2025}
}