Related papers: Mass Limits to Primordial Star Formation from Prot…
In this chapter I review theoretical models for the formation of very massive stars. After a brief overview of some relevant observations, I spend the bulk of the chapter describing two possible routes to the formation of very massive…
We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo. The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation. The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a…
Primordial stars formed in the early universe are thought to be hosted by compact dark matter (DM) halos. If DM consists of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), such stars may be powered by DM annihilation during the early phases…
The collapse of massive molecular clumps can produce high mass stars, but the evolution is not simply a scaled-up version of low mass star formation. Outflows and radiative effects strongly hinder the formation of massive stars via…
We present a semi-analytic model of star formation in the early universe, beginning with the first metal-free stars. By employing a completely feedback-limited star formation prescription, stars form at maximum efficiency until the…
I review recent progress in understanding the formation of the first stars and quasars. The initial conditions for their emergence are given by the now firmly established model of cosmological structure formation. Numerical simulations of…
We present a three-dimensional numerical simulation that resolves the formation process of a Population III star down to a scale of ~100 AU. The simulation is initialized on the scale of a dark matter halo of mass ~10^6 M_sun that…
The last decade has witnessed significant advances in our observational understanding of the earliest stages of low-mass star formation. The advent of sensitive receivers on large radio telescopes such as the JCMT and IRAM 30m MRT has led…
There has been considerable theoretical debate over whether photoionization and supernova feedback from the first Population III stars facilitate or suppress the formation of the next generation of stars. We present results from an Eulerian…
The first stars in the universe, forming at redshifts z>15 in minihalos with masses of order 10^6 Msun, may leave behind black holes as their remnants. These objects could conceivably serve as "seeds" for much larger black holes observed at…
Observations indicate that massive stars form in regions of very high surface density, ~1 g cm^-2. Clusters containing massive stars and globular clusters have a comparable column density. The total pressure in clouds of such a column…
We present simulations of collapsing 100 M_\sun mass cores in the context of massive star formation. The effect of variable initial rotational and magnetic energies on the formation of massive stars is studied in detail. We focus on…
We explore when supernovae can (and cannot) regulate the star formation and bulge growth in galaxies based on a sample of 18 simulated galaxies. The simulations include key physics such as evaporation and conduction, neglected in prior…
A promising formation channel of SMBHs at redshift 6 is the so-called DC model, which posits that a massive seed BH forms through gravitational collapse of a $\sim 10^5~M_\odot$ SMS. We study the evolution of such a SMS growing by rapid…
The formation of a star is a dynamic process fed by the gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core. Theoretical models and observations suggest that the majority of this infalling material settles into a protoplanetary disk before…
Mass accretion onto (proto-)stars at high accretion rates > 10^-4 M_sun/yr is expected in massive star formation. We study the evolution of massive protostars at such high rates by numerically solving the stellar structure equations. In…
We consider the effects of an outflow on radiation escaping from the infalling envelope around a massive protostar. Using numerical radiative transfer calculations, we show that outflows with properties comparable to those observed around…
Rotation plays a key role in the star-formation process, from pre-stellar cores to pre-main-sequence (PMS) objects. Understanding the formation of massive stars requires taking into account the accretion of angular momentum during their PMS…
The implementation of star formation and stellar feedback in cosmological simulations plays a critical role in shaping galaxy properties. In the first paper of the series, we presented a new method to model star formation as a collection of…
[abridged]We use 3D cosmological simulations with radiative transfer to study the formation and evolution of the first galaxies in a LCDM cosmology. We find that the first luminous objects ("small-halos") are characterized by a bursting…