Related papers: First Structure Formation and the First Stars
The first stars in the Universe form when chemically pristine gas heats as it falls into dark matter potential wells, cools radiatively due to the formation of molecular hydrogen, and becomes self-gravitating. We demonstrate with…
Paramount among the processes that ended the cosmic `dark ages' must have been the formation of the first generation of stars (the so-called Population III). We summarize recent progress in constraining its nature, and we discuss the basic…
Modern numerical simulations of the formation of the first stars predict that the first stars formed in multiples. In those cases, the chemical yields of multiple supernova explosions may have contributed to the formation of a next…
Magnetic fields play an important role for the formation of stars in both local and high-redshift galaxies. Recent studies of dynamo amplification in the first dark matter haloes suggest that significant magnetic fields were likely present…
Despite much recent theoretical and observational progress in our knowledge of the early universe, many fundamental questions remain only partially answered. Here, we review the latest achievements and persisting problems in the…
We describe how star formation is expected to proceed in the early metal-free Universe, focusing on the very first generations of stars. We then discuss how the star formation process may change as the effects of metallicity, external…
We perform high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to study the formation of the first galaxies that reach the masses of $10^{8-9}~h^{-1}~M_\odot$ at $z=9$. The resolution of the simulations is high enough to resolve…
The very first stars to form in the Universe heralded an end to the cosmic dark ages and introduced new physical processes that shaped early cosmic evolution. Until now, it was thought that these stars lived short, solitary lives, with only…
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…
We simulate the formation of a low metallicity (0.01 Zsun) stellar cluster in a dwarf galaxy at redshift z~14. Beginning with cosmological initial conditions, the simulation utilizes adaptive mesh refinement and sink particles to follow the…
Previous high resolution cosmological simulations predict the first stars to appear in the early universe to be very massive and to form in isolation. Here we discuss a cosmological simulation in which the central 50 solar mass clump breaks…
We describe the results of a simulation of collisionless cold dark matter in a LambdaCDM universe to examine the properties of objects collapsing at high redshift (z=10). We analyze the halos that form at these early times in this…
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…
Large telescopes have allowed astronomers to observe galaxies that formed as early as 850 million years after the Big Bang. We predict when the first star that astronomers can observe formed in the universe, accounting for the first time…
We performed $42$ simulations of the first star formation with initial supersonic gas flows relative to the dark matter at the cosmic recombination era. Increasing the initial streaming velocities led to delayed halo formation and increased…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Population III (or Pop. III) stars, the first stellar generation built up from metal-free primordial gas, first started to form at redshifts z ~ 30. They formed primarily in small dark matter halos with masses of a few million solar masses.…
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 with…
Numerical simulations of a Milky Way-size galaxy demonstrate that globular clusters with the properties similar to observed can form naturally at z > 3 in the concordance Lambda-CDM cosmology. The clusters in our model form in the strongly…
Fuzzy dark matter (FDM) is a proposed modification for the standard cold dark matter (CDM) model motivated by small-scale discrepancies in low-mass galaxies. Composed of ultra-light (mass $\sim 10^{-22}$ eV) axions with kpc-scale de Broglie…