Related papers: The First Stars
With the launch of JWST and the upcoming installation of extremely large telescopes, the first galaxies in our Universe will finally be revealed. Their light will be dominated by massive stars, which peak in in the ultra-violet (UV) part of…
The first stars fundamentally transformed the early universe by emitting the first light and by producing the first heavy elements. These effects were predetermined by the mass distribution of the first stars, which is thought to have been…
We discuss the expected properties of the first stellar generations in the Universe. We find that it is possible to discern truly primordial populations from the next generation of stars by measuring the metallicity of high-z star forming…
The earliest stars to form in the Universe were the first sources of light, heat and metals after the Big Bang. The products of their evolution will have had a profound impact on subsequent generations of stars. Recent studies of primordial…
We present a theoretical model for primordial star formation. First we describe the structure of the initial gas cores as virialized, quasi-hydrostatic objects in accord with recent high resolution numerical studies. The accretion rate can…
We calculate the observable signatures of the first generation of stars at high redshift (5<z<100). To determine the cosmic star-formation history, we use an extension of the Press-Schechter formalism for Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmologies…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first bound objects mark the transition from a simple cooling universe -- described by just a few parameters -- to a very messy hot one -- the…
Probing the growth of structure from the epoch of hydrogen recombination to the formation of the first stars and galaxies is one of the most important uncharted areas of observational cosmology. Far-IR spectroscopy covering $\lambda$…
The rest-frame UV emission from massive stars contains a wealth of information about the physical nature and conditions of star formation in galaxies. Using studies of the rest-frame UV, the past decade has witnessed the beginning of…
(Abridged) In these lectures aimed for non-specialists, I review progress in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Both the star formation history and assembly of stellar mass can be empirically traced from redshifts z~6 to the…
The abundance patterns of metal-poor stars provide us a wealth of chemical information about various stages of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. In particular, these stars allow us to study the formation and evolution of the elements…
The first galaxies forming a few hundred million years after the Big Bang are the key drivers of cosmic evolution and ideal laboratories to study theories of galaxy formation. We here study the role of UV radiation in suppressing star…
The formation and mass distribution of the first stars depend on various environmental factors in the early universe. We compare 120 cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to explore how the baryonic streaming velocity (SV) relative to…
The first star clusters and quasars resulted directly from the growth of linear density fluctuations in the early Universe. Since they emerged from a well-defined set of initial conditions, the interplay between observational data from the…
The formation of the first galaxies during cosmic dawn and reionization (at redshifts $z=5-30$), triggered the last major phase transition of our universe, as hydrogen evolved from cold and neutral to hot and ionized. The 21-cm line of…
In cold dark matter cosmological models, the first stars to form are believed to do so within small protogalaxies. We wish to understand how the evolution of these early protogalaxies changes once the gas forming them has been enriched with…
A fundamental quest of modern astronomy is to locate the earliest galaxies and study how they influenced the intergalactic medium a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline…
Modern cosmological simulations predict that the first generation of stars formed with a mass scale around 100 solar masses about 300-400 million years after the Big Bang. When the first stars reached the end of their lives, many of them…
The first stars were likely more massive than those forming today and thus rapidly evolved, exploding as supernovae and enriching the surrounding gas with their chemical products. In the Local Group, the chemical signature of the first…
The intergalactic medium was reionized before redshift z~6, most likely by starlight which escaped from early galaxies. The very first stars formed when hydrogen molecules (H2) cooled gas inside the smallest galaxies, minihalos of mass…