2023/07/21 by Shaw, Gargi, Ferland, Gary, Chatzikos, M. · 1 citation
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.02500
A two-body gas-phase reaction rate coefficient can be given by the usual Arrhenius-type formula which depends on temperature. The UMIST Database for Astrochemistry is a widely used database for reaction rate coefficients. They provide fittings for coefficients valid over a particular range of temperatures. The permissible upper-temperature limits vary over a wide range: from 100 K to 41000K. A wide range of temperatures occurs in nature; thus, it requires evaluating the rate coefficients at temperatures outside the range of validity. As a result, a simple extrapolation of the rate coefficients can lead to unphysically large values at high temperatures. These result in unrealistic predictions. Here we present a solution to prevent the gas-phase reaction coefficients from diverging at a very high temperature. We implement this into the spectral synthesis code CLOUDY which operates over a wide range of temperatures from CMB to 1010 K subject to different astrophysical environments.