Related papers: The Formation of Primordial Luminous Objects
Studies of molecular clouds and young stars near the sun have provided invaluable insights into the process of star formation. Indeed, much of our physical understanding of this topic has been derived from such studies. Perhaps the two most…
The process of star formation from metal-free gas is investigated by following the evolution of accreting protostars with emphasis on the properties of massive objects. The main aim is to establish the physical processes that determine the…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
Current theory and measurements establish the age of the universe as ca. 13.8 billion years. For the first several hundred million years of its existence, it was a dark, opaque void. After that, the hydrogen atoms comprising most of the…
The emergence of the first sources of light at redshifts of z ~ 10-30 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the Universe to one of increasing complexity. We review recent progress in our understanding of the formation of…
We present a review of observational studies of high-mass star formation, based mainly on our own research. It includes surveys of high-mass star-forming regions in various molecular lines and in continuum, investigations of filamentary…
Chemistry plays a particular role in astrophysics. After atomic hydrogen, helium and their ions, the Universe probably contains more mass in molecules than in any other species. Molecule formation in the early, pre-galactic Universe may…
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…
We investigate the process of metal-free star formation in the first galaxies with a high-resolution cosmological simulation. We consider the cosmologically motivated scenario in which a strong molecule-destroying Lyman-Werner (LW)…
We have performed a large set of high-resolution cosmological simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics to study the formation of the first luminous objects in the LCDM cosmology. We follow the collapse of primordial gas clouds in…
The formation of the first galaxies at redshifts z~10-15 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of ever increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding their assembly process with…
The first star clusters and quasars resulted directly from the growth of linear density fluctuations in the early Universe. Since they emerged from a well-defined set of initial conditions, the interplay between observational data from the…
The cosmic dark ages are the mysterious epoch during which the pristine gas began to condense and ultimately form the first stars. Although these beginnings have long been a topic of theoretical interest, technology has only recently…
The first generation of stars was formed from primordial gas. Numerical simulations suggest that the first stars were predominantly very massive, with typical masses M > 100 Mo. These stars were responsible for the reionization of the…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
Despite much recent theoretical and observational progress in our knowledge of the early universe, many fundamental questions remain only partially answered. Here, we review the latest achievements and persisting problems in the…
Among the remarkable strides made by JWST is the discovery of the earliest star clusters found to date. These have been proposed as early progenitors of globular clusters, which are known to come from the early stages of star formation in…
Dark matter (DM) in protostellar halos can dramatically alter the current theoretical framework for the formation of the first stars. Heat from supersymmetric DM annihilation can overwhelm any cooling mechanism, consequently impeding the…
Thermal and chemical evolution of primordial gas clouds irradiated with far-ultraviolet (FUV; < 13.6 eV) radiation is investigated. In clouds irradiated by intense FUV radiation, sufficient hydrogen molecules to be important for cooling are…
Formation of luminous matter in the Universe is a complicated process, which includes many processes and components. It is the vastly different scales involved in the process (from star formation on few parsec scales to galaxy clusters and…