Related papers: Suppression of H_2 Cooling in the Ultraviolet Back…
The ability of metal free gas to cool by molecular hydrogen in primordial halos is strongly associated with the strength of ultraviolet (UV) flux produced by the stellar populations in the first galaxies. Depending on the stellar spectrum,…
The detection of $\rm z>6$ quasars reveals the existence of supermassive black holes of a few $\rm 10^9~M_{\odot}$. One of the potential pathways to explain their formation in the infant universe is the so-called direct collapse model which…
The minimum mass that a virialized gas cloud must have in order to be able to cool in a Hubble time is computed, using a detailed treatment of the chemistry of molecular hydrogen. With a simple model for halo profiles, we reduce the problem…
The first generation of stars produces a background of Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation which can photo-dissociate molecular hydrogen, increasing the mass of dark matter halos required to host star formation. Previous studies have determined the…
We use a simple one-zone model of the thermal and chemical evolution of interstellar gas to study whether molecular hydrogen (H2) is ever an important coolant of the warm, diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). We demonstrate that at solar…
We investigate the ability of primordial gas clouds to retain molecular hydrogen (H_2) during the initial phase of the reionization epoch. We find that before the Stromgren spheres of the individual ionizing sources overlap, the UV…
We study the influence of low levels of metal enrichment on the cooling and collapse of ionized gas in small protogalactic halos using three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. Our initial conditions represent…
We study structure formation in cosmological void regions using high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations. Despite being significantly underdense, voids are populated abundantly with small dark matter halos which should appear as dwarf…
Context. To understand the formation of the first stars, a detailed description of the thermal and chemical processes in collapsing gas clouds is essential. Molecular cooling, particularly via H2, plays a significant role in triggering…
(abridged) We use large cosmological simulations to study the origin of primordial star-forming clouds in a Lambda CDM universe, by following the formation of dark matter halos and the cooling of gas within them. To model the physics of…
Photoionization by the high-redshift ultraviolet radiation background heats low density gas before it falls into dark matter potential wells, and it eliminates the neutral hydrogen and singly ionized helium that dominate cooling of…
It has been shown by Shchekinov & Vasiliev2006 (SV06) that HD molecules can be an important cooling agent in high redshift z >10 haloes if they undergo mergers under specific conditions so suitable shocks are created. Here we build upon…
Cooling is the main process leading to the condensation of gas in the dark matter potential wells and consequently to star and structure formation. In a metal-free environment, the main available coolants are H, He, H$_2$ and HD; once the…
HD dominates the cooling of primordial clouds with enhanced ionization, e.g. shock-heated clouds in structure formation or supernova remnants, relic HII regions of Pop III stars, and clouds with cosmic-ray (CR) irradiation. There, the…
The density distribution of the inter-galactic medium is an uncertain but highly important issue in the study of cosmic reionization. It is expected that there are abundant gas clouds hosted by low-mass "minihalos" in the early universe,…
The standard treatment of cooling in Cold Dark Matter halos assumes that all of the gas within a ``cooling radius'' cools and contracts monolithically to fuel galaxy formation. Here we take into account the expectation that the hot gas in…
The optical filaments found in many cooling flows in galaxy clusters consist of low density ($\sim 10^3 \pcc$) cool ($\sim 10^3$ K) gas surrounded by significant amounts of cosmic-ray and magnetic-field energy. Their spectra show…
We use the algorithm of Cole et al. (2000) to generate merger trees for the first star clusters in a Lambda CDM cosmology under an isotropic UV background radiation field, parametrized by J_21. We have investigated the problem in two ways:…
We present hydrodynamical simulations of the formation of galaxies in the mass range 10^9 - 10^13 solar masses, with the focus on the efficiency of gas cooling. The effect of a background UV radiation field, and the effect of metal…
The study of primordial chemistry of molecules adresses a number of interesting questions pertaining to the thermal balance of collapsing molecular protoclouds. In numerous astrophysical cases molecular cooling and heating influence…