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Hagai Netzer develops models connecting the spectral lines of active galactic nuclei to the conditions of their surrounding gas. In his account of emission-line physics, photons from the central source heat the gas by photoionization, while several atomic processes remove or redistribute that energy.

The resulting electron temperature follows a heating–cooling balance. It need not equal either the temperature assigned to the radiation field or the excitation temperature describing atomic level populations. This distinction is essential when interpreting a bright spectral line as a diagnostic of an illuminated cloud.^[ref]

First specify the perturbation: take fixed gas density, fixed ionic abundance and the same temperature-independent heating, so thermal stability requires $d\mathcal{C}/dT>0$ at an equilibrium. Let $\theta =\Delta E/k_B$, $n_e$ be the collider density and $n_A=n_1+n_2$ the atomic density. A two-level optically thin balance isThe critical density of an atomic transition is approximately $A_{21}/q_{21}$. At low density, each rare collisional excitation is followed by an escaping photon, soThe isochoric thermal stability of a collisionally excited line therefore givesAt $T=2\theta$ the linear restoring coefficient vanishes; the cooling maximum is marginal to first order and is not robust two-sided stability.

At high density, collisional de-excitation competes successfully with radiative decay, and collisions establish local thermodynamic equilibrium level populations. Detailed balance gives $n_2/n_1=g{e}^{-\theta /T}$, where $g=g_2/g_1$. The cooling is thenThus the high-density fixed-density branch is stable for finite $T$, becoming weakly restoring as the upper fraction saturates at high temperature. It is incorrect to retain the low-density factor $T^{-1/2}$ in the radiative cooling law once populations are thermalized.^[ref]

The isobaric thermal stability of a two-level coolant is a distinct question. If the intended heating is a fixed rate per particle, then $n\propto T^{-1}$ and stability tests the cooling per particle. The low-density boundary becomes $T<2\theta /3$; the high-density cooling per particle remains proportional to $f_u$, so remains stable. If instead heating is constant per volume, the isobaric low-density boundary is $T<2\theta /5$, and the high-density stability condition is $\theta (1-f_u)/T>1$. The source gives no pressure constraint or explicit heating normalization: the boxed $2\theta$ result is the fixed-density answer, with these conditional alternatives stated to avoid asserting a universal boundary.