Related papers: The Formation of Primordial Luminous Objects
Understanding the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies represents one of the most exciting frontiers in astronomy. Since the universe was filled with hydrogen atoms at early times, the most promising probe of the epoch of…
The first generation of stars is quite unique. The absence of metals likely affects their formation, with current models suggesting a much more top-heavy initial mass fraction than what we observe today, and some of their other properties,…
The theory of how low mass stars form from the collapse of a dense molecular cloud core has been well-established for decades. Thanks to significant progress in computing and numerical modelling, more physical models have been developed and…
Modern numerical simulations of the formation of the first stars predict that the first stars formed in multiples. In those cases, the chemical yields of multiple supernova explosions may have contributed to the formation of a next…
In star forming regions, we can observe different evolutionary stages of various objects and phenomena such as molecular clouds, protostellar jets and outflows, circumstellar disks, and protostars. However, it is difficult to directly…
It has been recently claimed that primordial magnetic fields could relieve the cosmological Hubble tension. We consider the impact of such fields on the formation of the first cosmological objects, mini-halos forming stars, for present-day…
The first luminous objects in the concordance cosmology form by molecular hydrogen cooling in dark matter dominated halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun. We use Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement simulations to demonstrate that in the presence of a…
The transition between the nearly smooth initial state of the Universe and its clumpy state today occurred during the epoch when the first stars and low-luminosity quasars formed. For Cold Dark Matter cosmologies, the radiation produced by…
In this work we show that modifying the thermal history of the Universe by including an early period of matter domination can lead to the formation of astronomical objects. However, the survival of these objects can only be possible if the…
The first stars to form in the Universe may be powered by the annihilation of weakly interacting dark matter particles. These so-called dark stars, if observed, may give us a clue about the nature of dark matter. Here we examine which…
The formation and mass distribution of the first stars depend on various environmental factors in the early universe. We compare 120 cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to explore how the baryonic streaming velocity (SV) relative to…
Population III (or Pop. III) stars, the first stellar generation built up from metal-free primordial gas, first started to form at redshifts z ~ 30. They formed primarily in small dark matter halos with masses of a few million solar masses.…
The interplay between chemistry and thermodynamics determines the final outcome of the process of gravitational collapse and sets the conditions for the formation of the first cosmological objects, including primordial supermassive black…
Modern cosmological simulations predict that the first generation of stars formed with a mass scale around 100 solar masses about 300-400 million years after the Big Bang. When the first stars reached the end of their lives, many of them…
Recent studies suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) of the first stars was likely to be extremely top-heavy, unlike what is observed at present. We propose a scenario to generate fragmentation to lower masses once the first massive…
Star formation is a complex multi-scale phenomenon that is of significant importance for astrophysics in general. Stars and star formation are key pillars in observational astronomy from local star forming regions in the Milky Way up to…
The first generation of stars, often called Population III (or Pop III), form from metal-free primordial gas at redshifts 30 and below. They dominate the cosmic star formation history until redshifts 15 to 20, at which point the formation…
The first stars are assumed to be predominantly massive. Although, due to the low initial abundances of heavy elements the line-driven stellar winds are supposed to be inefficient in the first stars, these stars may loose a significant…
The size and time of formation of the first gravitationally bound objects in the Universe is set by the microphysical properties of the dark matter. It is argued that observations seem to favour cold and thermal candidates for the main…
In the first lecture of this volume, we will present the basic fundamental ideas regarding nuclear processes occurring in stars. We start from stellar observations, will then elaborate on some important quantum-mechanical phenomena…