Related papers: Testing the existence of non-Maxwellian electron d…
In this paper we develop tools for observers to use when analysing nebular spectra for temperatures and metallicities, with two goals: to present a new, simple method to calculate equilibrium electron temperatures for collisionally excited…
The measurement of electron temperatures and metallicities in H ii regions and Planetary Nebulae (PNe) has-for several decades-presented a problem: results obtained using different techniques disagree. What it worse, they disagree…
A vexing puzzle in the study of planetary nebulae and \ion{H}{2} regions is that the plasma diagnostic results based on collisionally excited lines systematically differ from those based on recombination lines. A fairly speculative…
Recently, a suspicion arose that the free electrons in planetary nebulae (PNe) and HII regions might have non-thermal energy distributions. In this scenario, a kappa index is introduced to characterize the electron energy distributions,…
Some authors have proposed that electron energy distributions in H II regions and planetary nebulae may be significantly nonthermal, and kappa-distributions have been suggested as being appropriate. Here it is demonstrated that the electron…
Photoionization produces supra-thermal electrons, electrons with much more energy than is found in a thermalized gas at electron temperatures characteristic of nebulae. The presence of these high energy electrons may solve the long-standing…
In astronomical environments, the high-temperature emission of plasma mainly depends on ion charge states, which requires accurate analysis of the ionization and recombination processes. For various phenomena involving energetic particles,…
A recently generated theoretical line list of C II dielectronic recombination lines together with observational data gathered from the literature is used to investigate the electron temperature in a range of astronomical objects, mainly…
Non-Maxwellian $\kappa$ electron energy distributions (EEDs) have been proposed in recent years to resolve the so-called ``electron temperature and abundance discrepancy problem'' in the study of planetary nebulae (PNe). Thus the need to…
We investigate the possibility of diagnosing the degree of departure from the Maxwellian distribution using single-ion spectra originating in astrophysical plasmas in collisional ionization equilibrium. New atomic data for excitation of Fe…
After an extensive assessment of the effective collision strengths available to model the He-like triplet of C V, N VI, O VII, Ne IX, Mg XI and Si XIII in collisionally dominated plasmas, new accurate effective collision strengths are…
Recently, \citet{Nicholls12}, inspired by \emph{in situ} observations of solar system astrophysical plasmas, suggested that the electrons in \HII regions are characterised by a $\kappa$-distribution of electron energies rather than by a…
An analysis of the OIII and SIII temperatures measurements compiled by Perez-Montero et al. of emission line objects consisting of HII galaxies, giant extragalactic HII regions, Galactic HII regions and HII regions from the Magellanic…
Spectroscopic observations made by the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the 2012 March 7 X5.4-class flare (SOL2012-03-07T00:07) are analyzed for signatures of the…
Thermal X-ray spectra of clusters of galaxies and other sources are commonly calculated assuming Maxwellian electron distributions. There are situations where this approximation is not valid, for instance near interfaces of hot and cold gas…
Two independent electron temperature diagnostics applied to the quiet solar corona yield systematically different results. Radio brightness temperatures from the Nancay Radioheliograph indicate T_e ~ 0.6 MK, while hydrostatic scale-height…
The KAPPA package is designed for calculations of optically thin spectra for the non-Maxwellian \k{appa}-distributions. This paper presents extension of the database to allow calculations of the spectra for extreme values of \k{appa} < 2,…
Context. In a previous paper (Afify et al. 2024), we have investigated the stability threshold of the ion-ion acoustic instability (IIAI) in parameter regimes compatible with recent Parker Solar Probe (PSP, (Fox et al. 2016)) observations,…
The departure of particle distributions from the Maxwellian is commonly observed in space plasmas. These non-Maxwellian distributions which are typical for plasmas that are not in thermal equilibrium, can be modeled with…
The non-Maxwellian $\kappa$-distributions have been detected in the solar transition region and flares. These distributions are characterized by a high-energy tail and a near-Maxwellian core and are known to have significant impact on the…