Related papers: Evolution of the First Stars with Dark Matter Burn…
Massive stars played a key role in the early evolution of the Universe. They formed with the first halos and started the re-ionisation. It is therefore very important to understand their evolution. In this paper, we describe the strong…
A new line of research on Dark Stars is reviewed, which suggests that the first stars to exist in the universe were powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which may be there own…
We review recent theoretical results on the formation of the first stars in the universe, and emphasize related open questions. In particular, we discuss the initial conditions for Population III star formation, as given by variants of the…
We investigate the formation of metal-free, Population III (Pop III), stars within a minihalo at z ~ 20 with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation, starting from cosmological initial conditions. Employing a hierarchical,…
We use detailed nucleosynthesis calculations and a realistic prescription for the environment of the first stars to explore the first episodes of chemical enrichment that occurred during the dark ages. Based on these calculations, we…
We show that a star orbiting close enough to an adiabatically grown supermassive black hole (SMBH) can capture weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) at an extremely high rate. The stellar luminosity due to annihilation of captured…
The first stars are believed to have formed a few hundred million years after the big bang in so-called dark matter minihalos with masses ~10^6 M_sun. Their radiation lit up the Universe for the first time, and the supernova explosions that…
The character of the first galaxies at redshifts z > 10 strongly depends on their level of pre-enrichment, which is in turn determined by the rate of primordial star formation prior to their assembly. In order for the first galaxies to…
The early chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the Universe is vital to our understanding of a host of astrophysical phenomena. Since the most metal-poor Galactic stars (with metallicities down to [Fe/H]\sim-5.5) are relics from the…
We demonstrate that dark matter interactions can profoundly influence stellar nucleosynthesis in the early universe by altering thermodynamic gradients and modifying nuclear reaction rates within primordial stars. Incorporating a dark…
The first stars fundamentally transformed the early Universe through their production of energetic radiation and the first heavy chemical elements. The impact on cosmic evolution sensitively depends on their initial mass function (IMF),…
We perform a large set of radiation hydrodynamics simulations of primordial star formation in a fully cosmological context. Our statistical sample of 100 First Stars show that the first generation of stars have a wide mass distribution…
Star formation remains an unsolved problem in astrophysics. Numerical studies of large-scale structure simulations cannot resolve the whole process and their approach usually assumes that only gas denser than a typical threshold can host…
To constrain the nature of the very first stars, we investigate the collapse and fragmentation of primordial, metal-free gas clouds. We explore the physics of primordial star formation by means of three-dimensional simulations of the dark…
We explore the consequences of an early population of intermediate mass stars in the 2 - 8 M\odot range on cosmic chemical evolution. We discuss the implications of this population as it pertains to several cosmological and astrophysical…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
We use the stellar evolution code MESA to study dark stars. Dark stars (DSs), which are powered by dark matter (DM) self-annihilation rather than by nuclear fusion, may be the first stars to form in the Universe. We compute stellar models…
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…
Recent work has indicated that WIMP annihilation in stellar cores has the potential to contribute significantly to a star's total energy production. We report on progress in simulating the effects of WIMP capture and annihilation upon…
The formation of the first stars (Population III; PopIII) marks the end of the dark ages of the universe, a subject of lively scientific debate. Not (yet) accessible to direct observations, this early stage of the universe is mostly studied…