Related papers: The Formation of Primordial Luminous Objects
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…
The very first stars likely formed from metal-free, molecular hydrogen-cooled gas at the centers of dark matter minihalos. Prior to nuclear fusion, these stars may have been supported by dark matter heating from annihilations in the star,…
The first stars form in dark matter halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun as suggested by an increasing number of numerical simulations. Radiation feedback from these stars expels most of the gas from their shallow potential well of their surrounding…
The formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics. Within the broad context of hierachical structure formation, we have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own came into existence. A…
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…
Recent progress in the understanding of star formation is summarized. A consistent picture is emerging where molecular clouds form with turbulent velocity fields and clumpy substructure, imprinted already during their formation. The clouds…
Radiative feedback from populations II stars played a vital role in early structure formation. Particularly, photons below the Lyman limit can escape the star forming regions and produce a background ultraviolet (UV) flux which consequently…
A review on current theories and observations of high-mass star formation is given. Particularly the influence of magnetic fields and feedback mechanisms, and of varying initial conditions on theories are discussed. The, in my biased view,…
The major questions relevant to star and planet formation are: What controls the rate, efficiency, spatial clustering, multiplicity, and initial mass function of star formation, now and in the past? What are the major feedback mechanisms…
Low-mass protostars form from condensations inside molecular clouds when gravity overwhelms thermal and magnetic supporting forces. The first phases of the formation of a solar-type star are characterized by dramatic changes not only in the…
Once the first sources have formed, their mass deposition, energy injection and emitted radiation can deeply affect the subsequent galaxy formation process and influence the evolution of the IGM via a number of so-called feedback effects.…
A mechanism is identified whereby dark matter (DM) in protostellar halos dramatically alters the current theoretical framework for the formation of the first stars. Heat from neutralino DM annihilation is shown to overwhelm any cooling…
The massive First Stars (the first ones to contribute to the chemical enrichment of the Universe due to their short lifetimes) are long dead, and even though efforts to directly observe them in high redshift galaxies are underway, a step…
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…
We observe a sharp transition from a singular, high-mass mode of star formation, to a low-mass dominated mode, in numerical simulations, at a metallicity of 10^-3 Zsolar. We incorporate a new method for including the radiative cooling from…
In this contribution, our knowledge of the initial conditions under which massive star formation takes place is reviewed. Massive stars are born in massive clumps of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), hence first the properties of GMCs are…
Star formation involves the flow of gas and dust within molecular clouds into protostars and young stellar objects (YSOs) due to gravity. Along the way, these flows are shaped significantly by many other mechanisms, including pressure,…
In the present-day universe, it appears that most, and perhaps all, massive stars are born in star clusters. It also appears that all star clusters contain stars drawn from an approximately universal initial mass function, so that almost…
It is commonly believed that the earliest stages of star-formation in the Universe were self-regulated by global radiation backgrounds - either by the ultraviolet Lyman-Werner (LW) photons emitted by the first stars (directly…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…