Related papers: The First Stars
The annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles can provide an important heat source for the first (Pop. III) stars, potentially leading to a new phase of stellar evolution known as a "Dark Star". When dark matter (DM) capture via…
The birth and death of the first generation of stars have important implications for the thermal state and chemical properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the early universe. Sometime after recombination, the neutral, chemically…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
There is a longstanding discussion about whether low mass stars can form from pristine gas in the early Universe. A particular point of interest is whether we can find surviving pristine stars from the first generation in our local…
Understanding the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key problem in modern cosmology. In these lecture notes, we will derive some of the basic physical principles underlying this emerging field. We will consider the basic…
Using three-dimensional cosmological simulations, we study the assembly process of one of the first galaxies, with a total mass of 10^8 M_sun, collapsing at z = 10. Our main goal is to trace the transport of the heavy chemical elements…
I describe the current state of our knowledge of the mapping between the initial masses of stars and the compact objects -- particularly neutron stars and black holes -- that they produce. Most of that knowledge is theoretical in nature,…
Investigating the properties of the first stars in the universe is essential, yet it remains an open question. One way to explore these stars is by examining their effects on the surrounding gas during the epoch of reionization. In this…
We investigate the possibility of a supernova in supermassive ($5 \times 10^4 \;M_\odot$) population III stars induced by a general relativistic instability occurring in the helium burning phase. This explosion could occur via rapid helium…
If captured by the gravitational field of stars or other compact objects, dark matter can self-annihilate and produce a potentially detectable particle flux. In the case of superheavy dark matter ($ m_{X} \gtrsim 10^{8} GeV $), a large…
In this review, I survey our current understanding of how the very first stars in the universe formed, with a focus on three main areas of interest: the formation of the first protogalaxies and the cooling of gas within them, the nature and…
The presence of nine candidate galaxies at $z=17$ and $z=25$ discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in relatively small sky areas, if confirmed, is virtually impossible to reconcile with the predictions of the current galaxy formation…
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…
We model Pop III star formation in different FUV and X-ray backgrounds, including radiation feedback from protostars. We confirm previous results that a moderate X-ray background increases the number of Pop III systems per unit cosmological…
The first primitive galaxies formed from accretion and mergers by z ~ 15, and were primarily responsible for cosmological reionization and the chemical enrichment of the early cosmos. But a few of these galaxies may have formed in the…
We analyze the cosmological simulations performed in the recent work of Greif et al. (2012), which followed the early growth and merger history of Pop III stars while resolving scales as small as 0.05 R_sol. This is the first set of…
We investigate the formation of a galaxy reaching a virial mass of $~ 10^8$ solar mass at $z=10$ by carrying out a zoomed radiation-hydrodynamical cosmological simulation. This simulation traces Population~III (Pop~III) star formation,…
We investigate the properties of the first galaxies at z > 10 with highly resolved numerical simulations, starting from cosmological initial conditions and taking into account all relevant primordial chemistry and cooling. A first galaxy is…
Assuming that Dark Matter is dominated by WIMPs, it accretes by gravitational attraction and scattering over baryonic material and annihilates inside celestial objects, giving rise to a "Dark Luminosity" which may potentially affect the…
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…