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ABSTRACT: We discuss recent improvements in the calculation of the radiative cooling in
both collisionally and photo ionized plasmas. We are extending the spectral
simulation code Cloudy so that as much as possible of the underlying atomic
data is taken from external databases, some created by others, some developed
by the Cloudy team. This paper focuses on recent changes in the treatment of
many stages of ionization of iron, and discusses its extensions to other
elements. The H-like and He-like ions are treated in the iso-electronic
approach described previously. Fe II is a special case treated with a large
model atom. Here we focus on Fe III through Fe XXIV, ions which are important
contributors to the radiative cooling of hot, 1e5 to 1e7 K, plasmas and for
X-ray spectroscopy. We use the Chianti atomic database to greatly expand the
number of transitions in the cooling function. Chianti only includes lines that
have atomic data computed by sophisticated methods. This limits the line list
to lower excitation, longer wavelength, transitions. We had previously included
lines from the Opacity Project database, which tends to include higher energy,
shorter wavelength, transitions. These were combined with various forms of the
g-bar approximation, a highly approximate method of estimating collision rates.
For several iron ions the two databases are almost entirely complementary. We
adopt a hybrid approach in which we use Chianti where possible, supplemented by
lines from the Opacity Project for shorter wavelength transitions. The total
cooling including the lightest thirty elements differs significantly from some
previous calculations.
12/2012;
