Metagalactic Ultraviolet Background Tables for Calculating Diffuse Astrophysical Plasma Properties

Abstract In developing a deeper understanding of the Circumgalactic Medium, one feature that is poorly understood is the nature of the ultraviolet background (UVB) and its impact on observed column densities. A wide array of UVB models have been created over the years by many different authors, each based on the latest observational data available at the time. In addition to having a large variance between model properties, the formatting between released models is also inconsistent. This data release provides reformatted versions of several widely used ultraviolet background models—Faucher-Giguère et al., Haardt & Madau, Puchwein et al., and Faucher-Giguère 2020—such that each model is in the same units and thus can be utilized to directly compare these models over a wide redshift range. This release also includes code to run a cloudy_cooling_tools pipeline to generate ionization tables for different UVB models.