Ralph S. Sutherland coauthored a study of probability distributions of electron kinetic energy in H II regions and planetary nebulae. With David C. Nicholls and Michael A. Dopita, he investigated whether deviations from a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution could account for disagreements between different inferred temperatures and chemical abundances.
The authors explored a Kappa distribution with an enhanced high-energy population. The methodological point is that a temperature diagnostic depends on the assumed particle distribution; fitting different spectral lines can probe that assumption rather than merely repeat the same measurement.[ref]
Resolving the electron temperature discrepancies in H II regions and planetary nebulae: kappa-distributed electrons by David C. Nicholls and others. Abstract: discrepancies between diagnostics and the proposed kappa-distribution interpretation
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