Related papers: Inefficient Star Formation In Extremely Metal Poor…
The search for the first stars formed from metal-free gas in the universe is one of the key issues in astronomy because it relates to many fields, such as the formation of stars and galaxies, the evolution of the universe, and the origin of…
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),…
As the Universe emerged from its initial hot and dense phase, its chemical composition was extremely simple, being limited to stable H and He isotopes, and traces of Li. The first stars that formed had such initial composition. However,…
The chemical composition of stars with extremely low metal contents (taking ``metals'' to mean all elements other than hydrogen and helium) provides us with information on the masses of the stars that produced the first metals. Such a…
Observations of molecular clouds in metal-poor environments typically find that they have much higher star formation rates than one would expect based on their observed CO luminosities and the molecular gas masses that are inferred from…
Several emerging links between high-redshift observational cosmology and the Galactic fossil evidence found in the kinematics, metallicities and ages of Milky Way stars are discussed. In a flat Cold Dark Matter model with $\Omega\simeq 0.3$…
The formation of stars is a key process in the early universe with far reaching consequences for further cosmic evolution. While stars forming from truly primordial gas are thought to be considerably more massive than our Sun, stars in the…
We present a novel scenario for the formation of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars. Carbon enhancement at low stellar metallicities is usually considered a consequence of faint or other exotic supernovae. An analytical estimate of…
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…
We have measured the mass of metals in the molecular gas in 13 submillimetre galaxies at z~4 in which the gas, based on previous observations, lies in a cold rotating disk. We measured the metal masses using either the submillimetre line or…
Our current understanding of the chemical evolution of the Universe is that a first generation of stars was formed out of primordial material, completely devoid of metals (Pop III stars). This first population of stars comprised massive…
The formation of the first galaxies at redshifts z ~ 10-15 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of ever increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding their assembly process…
Metal-poor stars in the Milky Way are local relics of the epoch of the first stars and the first galaxies. However, a low metallicity does not prove that a star formed in this ancient era, as metal-poor stars form over a range of redshift…
Young galaxies are clumpy, gas-rich, and highly turbulent. Star formation appears to occur by gravitational instabilities in galactic disks. The high dispersion makes the clumps massive and the disks thick. The star formation rate should be…
We study star formation history and stellar metallicity distribution in galaxies in a Lambda cold dark matter universe using a hydrodynamic cosmological simulation. Our model predicts star formation rate declining in time exponentially from…
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…
High resolution X-ray spectra reveal hidden cooling flows depositing cold gas at the centres of massive nearby early-type galaxies with little sign of normal star formation. Optical observations are revealing that a bottom-heavy Initial…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed unexpectedly rapid galaxy assembly in the early universe, in tension with models of star and galaxy formation. In the gas conditions typical of early galaxies, particularly their low…
The first generation of stars was formed from primordial gas. Numerical simulations suggest that the first stars were predominantly very massive, with typical masses M > 100 Mo. These stars were responsible for the reionization of the…
Low surface brightness regions are found not only in dwarf and ultra-diffuse galaxies, but also on the outer parts of giant spirals, or in galaxy extensions (tidal or ram-pressure tails, outflows or jets). Sometimes molecular gas is…