 Inverse Compton cooling

Thermal electrons can transfer energy to lower-energy radiation photons through Compton scattering. In the nonrelativistic Thomson regime, the net cooling power per electron is $4{\sigma }_{T}c{U}_{\gamma }{k}_B(T_e-T_{\gamma })/(m_e{c}^2)$ for a blackbody photon bath. A sufficiently hot electron population therefore loses energy; a colder population is heated instead. The Cosmic microwave background radiation energy density grows as $(1+z{)}^4$, making this channel more important for high-redshift diffuse ionized gas.