Radiative Feedback in Population III Protostellar Growth: The Impact of HI Shielding
Abstract
We present a suite of radiation-magnetohydrodynamics simulations from the POPSICLE project that follow the long-term growth (~50 kyr) of primordial protostars while self-consistently coupling radiation, turbulence, and magnetic fields. The simulation suite is designed to quantify the relative impacts of the pathways of radiative feedback in Pop III stars - the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) ionization and Lyman-Werner (LW) dissociation - by considering simulations with and without their inclusion. We find that without HI shielding, LW feedback alone can suppress and ultimately terminate accretion. With HI shielding, the large column densities near the protostar significantly weaken LW feedback. In the polar direction, atomic hydrogen fully shields LW radiation where self-shielding alone is insufficient. This leads to lower gas temperatures near the protostar and higher accretion rates, yielding larger final stellar masses than in models without shielding. The HII regions remain compact and confined to less than about 100 AU measured outward from the sink accretion radius (75 AU) due to high gas densities and continuous gas replenishment that inhibit the thermal pressure-driven breakout of the ionization front even for high ionizing luminosities. These results demonstrate that the interplay of gas dynamics, shielding, and radiative feedback can significantly alter the growth of Pop III stars. We discuss the implications for the initial mass function of primordial stars and the influence of feedback from early stellar populations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.00197,
title = {Radiative Feedback in Population III Protostellar Growth: The Impact of HI Shielding},
author = {Avi Chen and Shyam H. Menon and Blakesley Burkhart and Piyush Sharda and Claire E. Williams and Smadar Naoz and Naoki Yoshida and Federico Marinacci and Mark Vogelsberger and William Lake},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.00197},
year = {2026}
}