Related papers: The Fragmentation of Pre-enriched Primordial Objec…
It has been shown that the behaviour of primordial gas collapsing in a dark matter minihalo can depend on the adopted choice of 3-body H$_2$ formation rate. The uncertainties in this rate span two orders of magnitude in the current…
We study the influence of low levels of metal enrichment on the cooling and collapse of ionized gas in small protogalactic halos using three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. Our initial conditions represent…
The theory for the formation of the first population of stars (Pop III) predicts a IMF composed predominantly of high-mass stars, in contrast to the present-day IMF, which tends to yield stars with masses less than 1 M_Solar. The leading…
The theory for the formation of the first population of stars (Pop III) predicts an initial mass function (IMF) dominated by high-mass stars, in contrast to the present-day IMF, which tends to yield mostly stars with masses less than 1…
We simulate the formation of a metal-poor (10^-2 Zsun) stellar cluster in one of the first galaxies to form in the early Universe, specifically a high-redshift atomic cooling halo (z~14). This is the first calculation that resolves the…
The thermodynamical evolution of gas during the collapse of the primordial star-forming cloud depends significantly on the initial degree of rotation. However, there is no clear understanding of how the initial rotation can affect the…
The prevalence of light element enhancement in the most metal-poor stars is potentially an indication that the Milky Way has a metallicity floor for star formation around $\sim$10$^{-3.5}$ Z$_{\odot}$. We propose that this metallicity floor…
We present a comprehensive observational study of the gas phase metallicity of star-forming galaxies from z ~ 0 -> 3. We combine our new sample of gravitationally lensed galaxies with existing lensed and non-lensed samples to conduct a…
We explore a scenario where metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) are enriched by the first supernovae in the Universe. If the first stars in a 10^7 Msun dark halo were very massive (>180 Msun), then a pair instability supernova from a single…
The collapse of the primordial gas in the density regime $\sim 10^{8}\hbox{--}10^{10}$ cm$^{-3}$ is controlled by the three-body $\rm H_2$ formation process, in which the gas can cool faster than free-fall time $\hbox{--}$ a condition…
Cloud evolution for various metallicities is investigated by three-dimensional nested grid simulations, in which the initial ratio of rotational to gravitational energy of the host cloud \beta_0 (=10^-1 - 10^-6) and cloud metallicity Z (=0…
We investigate the formation of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars that are observed in the Galactic halo and neighboring ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. Their low metal abundances (${\rm [Fe/H]} < -3$) indicate that their parent clouds were…
We report results from numerical simulations of star formation in the early universe that focus on gas at very high densities and very low metallicities. We argue that the gas in the central regions of protogalactic halos will fragment as…
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…
Primordial gas in protogalactic dark matter (DM) halos with virial temperatures Tvir > 10^4 K begins to cool and condense via atomic hydrogen. Provided this gas is irradiated by a strong ultraviolet (UV) flux and remains free of H2 and…
We present the first 3D simulations to include the effects of dark matter annihilation feedback during the collapse of primordial mini-halos. We begin our simulations from cosmological initial conditions and account for dark matter…
A brief review concludes that there is now good overall agreement between theoretical estimates of the energy associated with the production of the observed metal content of the Universe and the observed extragalactic background light. In…
We present a simulation of the formation of the earliest Population II stars, starting from cosmological initial conditions and ending when metals created in the first supernovae are incorporated into a collapsing gas-cloud. This occurs…
Cosmic metallicity evolution possibly creates the diversity of star formation modes at different epochs. Gravitational fragmentation of circumstellar discs provides an important formation channel of multiple star systems, including close…
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…