Radiative cooling rates, ion fractions, molecule abundances
and line emissivities including self-shielding and
both local and metagalactic radiation fields

Ploeckinger & Schaye (MNRAS, accepted) [paper on arxiv]


Hdf5 files I: Rates & fractions - Hdf5 files II: Line emissivities (hdf5 files) - UV background (for use with Cloudy) - Graphical user interface (python) - Routines for coupling to hydro code (C) - Supplementary_figures



Hdf5 files I: Rates and fractions

These files contain cooling and heating rates, ion fractions, dust depletion factors, as well as molecule and free electron abundances.



Download the rates and fractions hdf5 tables

An hdf5 datafile is available for each model listed in Table 5 of Ploeckinger & Schaye (MNRAS, accepted).


Helpful commands

After downloading the tables, they can be browsed with an hdf viewer (e.g. hdfview). In case no hdf viewer is available or for a quick overview of the datasets, the following commands are useful (for more info click here).

List all datasets in the hdf5 files:
> h5ls -r UV_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1.hdf5

Each dataset has the attributes "Info", "Dimension", and "Unit" for more details. The attributes can be displayed with:
> h5dump -a '/Info' UV_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1.hdf5
> h5dump -a '/Dimension' UV_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1.hdf5
> h5dump -a '/Unit' UV_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1.hdf5

where is the name of any dataset in the list returned by the "h5ls -r" command, for example:
> h5dump -a '/Tdep/Cooling/Info' UV_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1.hdf5


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Hdf5 files II: Line emissivities

These files contain the line emissivities for the 183 lines listed in Table 7 of the paper.



Download the line emissivities tables

An hdf5 datafile is available for the fiducial model (UVB_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1) as well as the unshielded version of the fiducial model (UVB_dust1_CR1_G1_shield0).


  • Click here to download the hdf5 file for the fiducial model (UVB_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1). (Available now!)
  • Click here to go to the download page for all available models. (Available now!)

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UV/X-ray background (mod. FG20)

For use in Cloudy (tested for v17.01)



The UV/X-ray background used in this work ("mod. FG20") is based on the spectrum by Faucher-Giguère (2020) ("FG20") but the input radiation field is attenuated by a column of neutral hydrogen until hydrogen reionization is complete and by a column of singly ionized helium until helium reionization is complete.

This radiation field can be used in Cloudy by replacing the file "hm12_galaxy.ascii" in the data folder and using the standard "table hm12 redshift 0.0" command. This was tested for Cloudy v17.01 but should work for a variety of Cloudy versions.

  • Click here to download the ascii file for the modified FG20 radiation field and for more details on the format of the file.

modified FG20 UVB

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Graphical user interface (gui)

Explore and plot the content of the 4 dimensional tables.



Download and use the gui

This python-based gui uses the tkinter package and is hosted on github. After downloading the hdf5 and the python gui files, the gui can be started with:
> python3 CoolingTablesGUI_main.py

Note: All images will be saved to the folder where the gui is started from.
Tip: Create an alias for the above command line to easily start the gui.

Once the window appears ( preview on github), the model (1), the redshift (2) and the metallicity (3) can be selected. For constant density plots, if selected in (5), also the density (4) is used. The drop-down menu in (5) allows one to plot a variety of datasets. The options are a 2D plot (density - temperature), a 1D plot for constant density, as well as a 1D plot (x-axis: density) at the thermal equilibrium temperature for each density.

The plot can either be "displayed" (left button) or "saved" (right button).


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Routines to couple to hydro code

C routines



Download and use the C routines

A compilation of C routines to read in and interpolate the tables to return the net cooling rate for a given redshift, metallicity, temperature, and density is hosted on github. Individual routines can be directly used and/or adapted to be coupled to a hydrodynamics code.


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Supplementary figures

Figure gallery



Ion fractions

The figures below show the ion fractions for the gas phase at the thermal equilibrium temperature of the last Cloudy zone (i.e. the temperature where cooling rate = heating rate) for solar metallicity gas at z=0, using the fiducial model (UVB_dust1_CR1_G1_shield1). All figures were made with the python gui. ​


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