English

Formation of Pop II star clusters in the aftermath of a pair instability supernova

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-10-28 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Pop II stars formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang were key drivers of cosmic reionization and building blocks of high redshift galaxies. How and when these stars formed is a subject of ongoing research. We conduct cosmological radiation hydrodynamical simulations to investigate the formation of Pop II star clusters in dark matter halos forming at z=1025z=10-25 in the aftermath of a pair instability supernova (PISN). Our simulations model the formation of Pop III and Pop II stars in a self-consistent manner along with their radiative, chemical and SN feedback in halos of 5×1057×107 M\rm 5 \times 10^5- 7 \times 10^7~M_{\odot}. We find that a PISN evacuates the gas from halos 3×106 M\rm \leq 3 \times 10^{6}~M_{\odot} and thereafter shuts off in situ star formation for at-least 30 Myr. Pop II stellar clusters of 923 M\rm 923~M_{\odot} and 6800 M\rm 6800~M_{\odot} form in halos of 3.5×107 M\rm 3.5 \times 10^7~M_{\odot} and 7.2×107 M\rm 7.2 \times 10^7~M_{\odot}, respectively. The mode of star formation is highly episodic and mainly regulated by Pop II SN feedback. The average star formation rates are 105104 M/yr\rm 10^{-5}-10^{-4}~M_{\odot}/yr and the star formation efficiency is less than 1\%.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.13213,
  title  = {Formation of Pop II star clusters in the aftermath of a pair instability supernova},
  author = {Muhammad A. Latif and Dominik Schleicher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.13213},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

To be published in ApJL, comments welcome