Related papers: The search for Population III stars
We study the number and the distribution of low mass Pop III stars in the Milky Way. In our numerical model, hierarchical formation of dark matter minihalos and Milky Way sized halos are followed by a high resolution cosmological…
The abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars preserve a fossil record of the Universe's earliest chemical enrichment by the supernova explosions from the evolution of first generation of stars, also referred to as Population III (or…
How and when did the first generation of stars form at the end of the cosmic dark ages? Quite generically, within variants of the cold dark matter model of cosmological structure formation, the first sources of light are expected to form in…
Hydrodynamical cosmological simulations predict that the metal-free Population III (Pop III) stars were likely very massive and, therefore, short-lived. However, they left their chemical imprint on their descendants, which can also have…
Recent numerical studies argue that low-mass stars can be formed even at zero-metallicity environment. These low-mass Population III(Pop.~III) stars are thought to be still shining and able to be observed in the Local Universe. Most…
I discuss current theoretical expectations of how primordial, Pop III.1 stars form. Lack of direct observational constraints makes this a challenging task. In particular predicting the mass of these stars requires solving a series of…
We show that the emission from the first, metal-free stars inside Population III objects (PopIIIs) are needed to explain the level of fluctuations in the Near Infrared Background (NIRB) recently discovered by Kashlinsky et al. (2002), at…
Population III (Pop III) stars formed out of metal free gas in minihalos at $z>20$. While their ignition ended the Dark Ages and begin enrichment of the IGM, their mass distribution remains unconstrained. To date, no confirmed Pop III star…
We discuss the link between dark matter halos hosting the first PopIII stars formed at redshift z > 40 and the rare, massive, halos that are generally considered to host bright z~6 quasars. We show that within the typical volume occupied by…
The WMAP satellite has measured a large optical depth to electron scattering after cosmological recombination of 0.17+-0.04, implying significant reionization of the primordial gas only ~200 million years after the big bang. However, the…
[abridged] The First Stars in the Universe form out of pristine primordial gas clouds that have been radiatively cooled to a few hundreds of degrees Kelvin either via molecular or atomic (Lyman-Alpha) hydrogen lines. This primordial mode of…
The properties of the first metal-free stars remain largely unknown, and so far, the only data-driven constraints on their mass distribution (IMF) come from near-field cosmology. Here, we interpret new observations of the C1 and C2…
Motivated by recent theoretical work suggesting that a substantial fraction of Population (Pop) III stars may have had masses low enough for them to survive to the present day, we consider the role that the accretion of metal-enriched gas…
The redshifted light of the first (Pop III) stars might substantially contribute to the near infrared background (NIRB). By fitting recent data with models including up-to-date Pop III stellar spectra, we find that such stars can indeed…
Massive Pop III stars can die as energetic supernovae that enrich the early universe with metals and determine the properties of the first galaxies. With masses of about $10^9$ Msun at $z \gtrsim 10$, these galaxies are believed to be the…
We present a new near-field cosmological probe of the initial mass function (IMF) of the first stars. Specifically, we constrain the lower-mass limit of the Population III (Pop III) IMF with the total number of stars in large, unbiased…
Recently, Nakajima et al. (2025) presented James Webb Space Telescope observations of the $z=6.6$ Population III (Pop III) candidate LAP1-B, which is gravitationally lensed by galaxy cluster MACS J0416. We argue that this is the first…
The detection of Pop III supernovae could directly probe the primordial IMF for the first time, unveiling the properties of the first galaxies, early chemical enrichment and reionization, and the seeds of supermassive black holes. Growing…
Radiative feedback from massive Population III (Pop III) stars in the form of ionising and photodissociating photons is widely believed to play a central role in shutting off accretion onto these stars. Understanding whether and how this…
From studying the cosmic microwave background, we know our Universe started out very simple. It was by and large homogeneous and isotropic, with small fluctuations that can be described by linear perturbation theory. In stark contrast, the…