Related papers: Primordial molecules at millimeter wavelengths
The determination of chemical abundances in star-forming galaxies and the study of their evolution on cosmological timescales are powerful tools for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. This contribution presents the latest results…
The early chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the Universe is vital to our understanding of a host of astrophysical phenomena. Since the most metal-poor Galactic stars (with metallicities down to [Fe/H]\sim-5.5) are relics from the…
Gas and dust in the Galactic Center are subjected to energetic processing by intense UV radiation fields, widespread shocks, enhanced rates of cosmic-rays and X-rays, and strong magnetic fields. The Giant Molecular Clouds in the Galactic…
Large interstellar organic molecules are potential precursors of prebiotic molecules. Their formation pathways and chemical relationships with one another and simpler molecules are therefore of great interest. In this paper, we address the…
Volatiles are compounds with low sublimation temperatures, and they make up most of the condensible mass in typical planet-forming environments. They consist of relatively small, often hydrogenated, molecules based on the abundant elements…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) represent a natural candidate for one of the components of the dark matter (DM) in the Universe. In this review, we shall discuss the basics of their formation, abundance and signatures. Some of their…
The embedded phase of star formation is the crucial phase where most of the stellar mass is assembled. Velocity-resolved spectra reveal an infalling envelope, bipolar outflows, and perhaps an infant circumstellar disk -- all locked together…
We discuss properties and evolution of quark-gluon plasma in the early Universe and compare to laboratory heavy ion experiments. We describe how matter and antimatter emerged from a primordial soup of quarks and gluons. We focus our…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
Within the context of hot big-bang cosmology, a cosmic background of presently low energy neutrinos is predicted to exist in concert with the photons of the cosmic background radiation. The number density of the cosmological neutrinos is of…
The connection between cosmological observations and neutrino physics is discussed in detail. Neutrinos decouple from thermal contact in the early Universe at a temperature of order 1 MeV which coincides with the temperature where light…
We review the role of primordial black holes (PBHs) for illuminating the dark ages of the cosmological evolution and as dark matter (DM) candidates. We elucidate the role of phase transitions for primordial black hole formation in the early…
The cosmic microwave background and the cosmic expansion can be interpreted as evidence that the Universe underwent an extremely hot and dense phase about 14 Gyr ago. The nucleosynthesis computations tell us that the Universe emerged from…
In the first thousand seconds of its evolution the Universe was a primordial nuclear reactor synthesizing the nuclides D, $^3$He, $^4$He and $^7$Li. These messengers from the Big Bang provide a unique window on the early, hot, dense…
The initial conditions of our Universe can be summarized on a single sheet of paper. Yet the Universe is full of complex structures today, such as stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies. In this review I describe the standard theoretical…
In cosmological models favored by current observations, the first astrophysical objects formed in dark matter halos at redshifts starting at z>20, and their properties were determined by primordial H_2 molecular chemistry. These…
If the effective cosmological constant $\Lambda$ of the present universe is due to physical processes in the early universe operating at temperatures just above the electroweak energy scale, it is possible that new particles with…
Theoretical investigations into the evolution of the early universe are an essential part of particle physics that allow us to identify viable extensions to the Standard Model as well as motivated parameter space that can be probed by…
The first stars are believed to have formed a few hundred million years after the big bang in so-called dark matter minihalos with masses ~10^6 M_sun. Their radiation lit up the Universe for the first time, and the supernova explosions that…
The first stars in the Universe are predicted to have been much more massive than the Sun. Gravitational condensation accompanied by cooling of the primordial gas due to molecular hydrogen, yields a minimum fragmentation scale of a few…