Comparison of average electron deceleration (see the definition in Sect. 3.1) for multi-energetic particles using grey atmosphere with different power-law indices δ and minimum cutoff energies γ_min (cf. Fig. 5 in Bauböck et al. 2019). The green curve is for δ = 2 and γ_min = 10, the blue curve for δ = 2 and γ_min = 2, the red curve for δ = 3 and γ_min = 10, and the orange curve for δ = 3 and γ_min = 2; in all cases the upper limit for the energy distribution is γ_max = 2 × 10⁵. The dashed curves present the results where the bremsstrahlung losses are taken into account.