Related papers: Protostar Formation in the Early Universe
The observable characteristics and subsequent evolution of young stellar populations is dominated by their massive stars. As our understanding of those massive stars and the factors affecting their evolution improves, so our interpretation…
The study of the long-dead early generations of massive stars is crucial in order to obtain a complete picture of the chemical evolution of the Universe, hence the origin of the elements. The nature of these stars can be inferred indirectly…
Interstellar dust links the formation of the first stars to the rocky planet we inhabit by playing a pivotal role in the cooling and fragmentation of molecular clouds, and catalyzing the formation of water and organic molecules. Despite its…
We have collected from the literature a list of early-type stars, situated at large distances from the galactic plane, for which evidence of youth seems convincing. We discuss two possible formation mechanisms for these stars: ejection from…
Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial conditions and early phases of the star formation…
We review the current status of knowledge concerning the early phases of star formation during cosmic dawn. This includes the first generations of stars forming in the lowest mass dark matter halos in which cooling and condensation of gas…
The discovery of a population of young galaxies at an epoch when the universe was about one tenth of its current age has shed new light on the question of when and how galaxies formed. Within the context of popular models this is the…
If the cosmological dark matter has a component made of small primordial black holes, they may have a significant impact on the physics of the first stars and on the subsequent formation of massive black holes. Primordial black holes would…
The origin of super-massive black holes in the early universe remains poorly understood.Gravitational collapse of a massive primordial gas cloud is a promising initial process,but theoretical studies have difficulty growing the black hole…
The protostellar jets driven by the formation of the first stars are studied by using MHD nested grid simulations. Starting from a slowly rotating spherical cloud of 5.1 times 10^4 Msun permeated by a uniform magnetic field, we follow the…
The solid content of circumstellar disks is inherited from the interstellar medium: dust particles of at most a micrometer in size. Protoplanetary disks are the environment where these dust grains need to grow at least 13 orders of…
The envelopes and disks that surround protostars reflect the initial conditions of star and planet formation and govern the assembly of stellar masses. Characterizing these structures requires observations that span the near-infrared to…
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of primordial star formation suggest that the gas within the first star-forming halos is turbulent. This has strong implications on the subsequent evolution, in particular on the generation of…
The first dwarf galaxies, which constitute the building blocks of the collapsed objects we find today in the Universe, had formed hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. This pedagogical review describes the early growth of their…
The formation of massive stars is one of the major unsolved problems in stellar astrophysics. However, only few if any of these are found as single stars, on average massive stars have more than one companion. Many of them are born in dense…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
The determination of the star-formation history of the Universe is a key goal of modern cosmology, as it is crucial to our understanding of how structure in the Universe forms and evolves. A picture has built up over recent years,…
Present-day clusters are massive halos containing mostly quiescent galaxies, while distant protoclusters are extended structures containing numerous star-forming galaxies. We investigate the implications of this fundamental change in a…
Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…