Related papers: How big were the first cosmological objects?
In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying…
The size of the smallest dark matter collapsed structures, or protohalos, is set by the temperature at which dark matter particles fall out of kinetic equilibrium. The process of kinetic decoupling involves elastic scattering of dark matter…
Recent observations made using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a number of high-redshift galaxies that are unexpectedly luminous. In light of this, it is clear that a more detailed understanding of the high redshift,…
We find that clouds of optically-thin, pressure-confined gas are prone to fragmentation as they cool below $\sim10^6$ K. This fragmentation follows the lengthscale $\sim{c}_{\text{s}}\,t_{\text{cool}}$, ultimately reaching very small scales…
We report a series of high-resolution cosmological N-body simulations designed to explore the formation and properties of dark matter halos with masses close to the damping scale of the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations. We…
Pristine, atomically-cooled haloes may be the sites of primordial quasar formation because atomic cooling triggers rapid baryon collapse that can create 10$^4$ - 10$^5$ M$_{\odot}$ black hole seeds. However, no numerical simulation has ever…
We examine the effects of mass resolution and force softening on the density profiles of cold dark matter halos that form within cosmological N-body simulations. As we increase the mass and force resolution, we resolve progenitor halos that…
Hierarchical Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models predict that Milky Way (MW) sized halos contain hundreds of dense low-mass dark satellites, an order of magnitude more than the number of observed satellites in the Local Group (LG). If the CDM…
High-quality optical rotation curves for a sample of low-luminosity spirals evidence that the dark halos around galaxies are inconsistent with the output of proper CDM simulations. In fact, dark halos enveloping stellar disks are structures…
Six examples of the compact, isolated high-velocity HI clouds (CHVCs) identified by Braun and Burton (1999) have been imaged with the WSRT. The 65 confirmed objects in this class define a dynamically cold system, with a global minimum for…
The mass of the gaseous reservoir in young circumstellar disks is a crucial initial condition for the formation of planetary systems, but estimates vary by orders of magnitude. In some disks with resolvable cavities, sharp inner disk warps…
Numerical simulations show the formation of self-gravitating primordial disks during the assembly of the first structures in the Universe, in particular during the formation of Pop.~III and supermassive stars. Their subsequent evolution is…
Structure formation with cold dark matter (CDM) predicts halos with a central density cusp, which are observationally disfavored. If CDM particles have an annihilation cross section sigma*v ~ 10**(-29) (m/GeV) cm**2, then annihilations will…
We study the evolution of gas in HII regions around the first stars after the death of the exciting stars. If the first star in a small halo dies without supernova (SN), subsequent star formation is possible in the same halo. We thus…
We use numerical simulations of critically-closed cold dark matter (CDM) models to study the effects of numerical resolution on observable quantities. We study simulations with up to $256^3$ particles using the particle-mesh (PM) method and…
We examine the cooling radiation from forming galaxies in hydrodynamic simulations of the LCDM model (cold dark matter with a cosmological constant), focusing on the Ly-alpha line luminosities of high-redshift systems. Primordial…
Molecular cooling is essential for studying the formation of sub-structure of dissipative dark-matter halos that may host compact objects such as black holes. Here, we analyze the reaction rates relevant for the formation, dissociation, and…
The thermal and chemical evolution of gravitationally collapsing protostellar clouds is investigated, focusing attention on their dependence on metallicity. Calculations are carried out for a range of metallicities spanning the local…
In cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogonies, low-mass objects play an important role in the evolution of the universe. Not only are they the first luminous objects to shed light in a previously dark universe, but, if their formation is not…
We present the design and methods of the COS-Halos survey, a systematic investigation of the gaseous halos of 44 z = 0.15-0.35 galaxies using background QSOs observed with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope.…