The plasma physicist’s guide to CR modelling based on the Yacora solver for atomic and molecular hydrogen

Abstract The predictive capabilities of population models, such as collisional-radiative and corona models, for atomic and molecular hydrogen benefit from the recent advances in the availability of reaction probabilities, particularly due to the quantum mechanical convergent close-coupling (CCC) and molecular CCC (MCCC) methods. The CCC method provides, for the first time, an extensive set of cross sections for the electron impact excitation of atomic hydrogen that are accurate at the excitation threshold, thus enabling precise model predictions at low electron temperatures. The MCCC method provides consistent sets of cross sections for electron impact (de-)excitation of molecular hydrogen with different ro-vibrational resolution, thus enabling for the first time the development of a consistent set of population models with different detail level. This consistent set of population models allows investigations with different detail level of the plasma kinetics based on the same data basis. This work guides through the (differently resolved) population models based on the Yacora solver for atomic (Yacora H) and molecular hydrogen (Yacora H 2 , Yacora H 2 ( X 1 , v ), Yacora H 2 ( v ), Yacora H 2 ( v , N ) Fulcher) applying state-of-the-art reaction probabilities and demonstrates the respective individual application possibilities.