English

Radiative cooling functions for primordial molecules

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-27 v1

Abstract

Cooling of primordial gas plays a crucial role in the birth of the first structures in our Universe. Due to the low fractional abundance of molecular species at high redshifts, spontaneous emission rather than collisions represents the most efficient way to cool the pristine plasma. In the present work, radiative cooling functions are evaluated for the diatomic species HD, HD+^+, HeH+^+, LiH and LiH+^+. Cooling functions for the triatomic ions H3+_3^+ and H2_2D+^+ are also considered. Analytic fits as functions of temperature are provided.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.2957,
  title  = {Radiative cooling functions for primordial molecules},
  author = {Carla Maria Coppola and Lorenzo Lodi and Jonathan Tennyson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.2957},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 pages, 9 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:39:47.994Z