Atomic Collisional Ionization

Class providing collisional ionization rate coefficients (in cm\(^3\) s\(^{-1}\)) for atoms of given atomic number and ionization state at a specified electron temperature. Collisional ionization by free electrons competes with photoionization and recombination to set the ionization balance of gas in H**ii** regions, the IGM, and the CGM.

Default implementation: atomicIonizationRateCollisionalVerner1996

Methods

rate → double precision

Returns the radiative recombination rate in units of cm\(^3\) s\(^{-1}\).

  • integer , intent(in ) :: atomicNumber, ionizationState

  • double precision, intent(in ) :: temperature

atomicIonizationRateCollisionalVerner1996

Atomic collisional ionization rates are computed based on the code originally written by Dima Verner.

(Default implementation)

atomicIonizationRateCollisionalZero

A null implementation of atomic collisional ionization rates that returns zero for all species and temperatures. Useful for isolating other ionization and recombination processes or for testing purposes.