Related papers: Russell Lecture: Dark Star Formation and Cooling I…
(abridged) We use large cosmological simulations to study the origin of primordial star-forming clouds in a Lambda CDM universe, by following the formation of dark matter halos and the cooling of gas within them. To model the physics of…
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 cosmic star formation rate density first increases with time towards a pronounced peak 10 Gyrs ago (or z=1-2) and then slows down, dropping by more than a factor 10 since z=1. The processes at the origin of the star formation quenching…
Shocks may have been prevalent in the early Universe, associated with virialization and supernova explosions, etc. Here, we study thermal evolution and fragmentation of shock-compressed clouds, by using a one-zone model with detailed…
The evolution of halos consisting of weakly self-interacting dark matter particles is summarized. The halos initially contain a central density cusp as predicted by cosmological models. Weak self-interaction leads to the formation of an…
The present infrared brightness of a planet originates partly from the accretion energy that the planet gained during its formation and hence provides important constraints to the planet formation process. A planet cools down from a hot…
Clumped dark matter arises naturally within the framwork of generic cosmological dark matter models. Invoking the existence of dark matter clumps can also solve may unexplained mysteries in astrophysics and geology or geophysics, eg. the…
In massive primordial galaxies, the gas may directly collapse and form a single central massive object if cooling is suppressed. Line cooling by molecular hydrogen can be suppressed in the presence of a strong soft-ultraviolet radiation…
Self gravitational fluid mechanical methods termed hydro-gravitational-dynamics (HGD) predict plasma fragmentation 0.03 Myr after the turbulent big bang to form protosuperclustervoids, turbulent protosuperclusters, and protogalaxies at the…
We perform a set of cosmological simulations of early structure formation with incorporating baryonic streaming motions. We present a case where a significantly elongated gas cloud with $\sim\!10^4\,$solar masses (${\rm M_\odot}$) is formed…
The distribution of cold gas in dark matter haloes is driven by key processes in galaxy formation: gas cooling, galaxy mergers, star formation and reheating of gas by supernovae. We compare the predictions of four different galaxy formation…
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…
The first generation of protogalaxies likely formed out of primordial gas via H2-cooling in cosmological minihalos with virial temperatures of a few 1000K. However, their abundance is likely to have been severely limited by feedback…
We use a series of N-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations and analytic arguments to show that the presence of an effective temperature floor in the interstellar medium at T_F ~ 10^4 K naturally explains the tendency for low-mass…
Using standard Einstein theory, baryonic mass cannot account for observed galactic rotation velocities and gravitational lensing, attributed to galactic dark matter halos. In contrast, theory constrained by Weyl conformal scaling symmetry…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
HD molecules can be an important cooling agent of the primordial gas behind the shock waves originated through mergings of the dark matter haloes at epochs when first luminous objects were to form. We study the necessary conditions for the…
The formation and evolution of low-mass stars within dense halos of dark matter (DM) leads to evolution scenarios quite different from the classical stellar evolution. As a result of our detailed numerical work, we describe these new…
Dark matter constitutes the great majority of the matter content in the Universe, but its microscopic nature remains an intriguing mystery, with profound implications for particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Here we shed light on…
We study the formation and evolution of dark galaxies using the IllustrisTNG cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We first identify dark galaxies with stellar-to-total mass ratios, $M_* / M_{\text{tot}}$, smaller than $10^{-4}$, which…