Related papers: Russell Lecture: Dark Star Formation and Cooling I…
We investigate thermal regime of the baryons behind shock waves arising in the process of virialization of dark matter halos. We find a fraction of the shocked gas cooled by radiation of HD molecules down to the temperature of the cosmic…
(Abridged) Galaxies form in hierarchically assembling dark matter halos. With cosmological three dimensional adaptive mesh refinement simulations, we explore in detail the virialization of baryons in the concordance cosmology, including…
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 use simple analytic reasoning to identify physical processes that drive the evolution of the cosmic star formation density in cold dark matter universes. Based on our analysis, we formulate a model to characterise the redshift dependence…
A simple, 1-equation, galaxy formation model is applied to both the halo merger tree derived from a high-resolution dissipationless cosmological simulation and to 1/4 million Monte-Carlo halo merger trees. The galaxy formation model…
We have proposed that the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may be Dark Stars (DS), powered by dark matter heating rather than by nuclear fusion. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which may be their own…
Dark Stars are stellar objects made (almost entirely) of hydrogen and helium, but powered by the heat from Dark Matter annihilation, rather than by fusion. They are in hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium, but with an unusual power source.…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
Within protogalaxies, thermal instability leads to the formation of a population of cool fragments, confined by the pressure of residual hot gas. The hot gas remains in quasi-hydrostatic equilibrium, at approximately the virial temperature…
We perform numerical simulations for the formation of the Galactic stellar halo, based on the currently favored cold dark matter (CDM) theory of galaxy formation. Our numerical models, taking into account both dynamical and chemical…
A standard paradigm is now available for the recent evolution (z < 10) of structure on galactic and larger scales. Most of the matter is assumed to be dark and dissipationless and to cluster hierarchically from gaussian initial conditions.…
There is a well known disparity between the evolution the star formation rate density, {\psi}*, and the abundance of neutral hydrogen (HI), the raw material for star formation. Recently, however, we have shown that {\psi}* may be correlated…
It is shown that a first-order cosmological perturbation theory for Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universes admits one and only one gauge-invariant variable which describes the perturbation to the energy density and which becomes…
The nature of the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy is still largely unknown. The microlensing events found so far towards the Large Magellanic Cloud suggest that at most about 20% of the halo dark matter is in the form of MACHOs…
Galaxy surveys have shown that luminous galaxies are mainly distributed in large filaments and galaxy clusters. The remaining large volumes are virtually devoid of luminous galaxies. This is in concordance with the formation of the…
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…
The first stars form in dark matter halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun as suggested by an increasing number of numerical simulations. Radiation feedback from these stars expels most of the gas from their shallow potential well of their surrounding…
There has been a vast recent improvement in photometric and kinematic data for star clusters, Ultra Compact dwarfs, galactic nuclei, and local dSph galaxies, with Subaru contributing substantially to the photometric studies in particular.…
Theory predicts and observations confirm that low-mass stars (like the Sun) in their early life grow by accreting gas from the surrounding material. But for stars ~ 10 times more massive than the Sun (~10 M_sun), the powerful stellar…
Initial conditions for star formation in clusters are estimated for protostars whose masses follow the initial mass function (IMF) from 0.05 to 10 solar masses. Star-forming infall is assumed equally likely to stop at any moment, due to gas…