Related papers: First Light
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 neutral hydrogen at early times, the most promising method for…
About 12 billion years ago, the Universe was first experiencing light again after the dark ages, and galaxies filled the environment with stars, metals and dust. How efficient was this process? How fast did these primordial galaxies form…
Hierarchical galaxy formation is the model whereby massive galaxies form from an assembly of smaller units. The most massive objects therefore form last. The model succeeds in describing the clustering of galaxies, but the evolutionary…
As some of the first known objects to exist in the Universe, Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) naturally draw a lot of interest. First discovered over a decade ago, they have allowed us to probe the early Universe, as their strong…
When and how did galaxies form and their metals accumulate? Over the last decade, this has moved from an archeological question to a live investigation: there is now a broad picture of the evolution of galaxies in dark matter halos: their…
We utilize metal-poor stars in the local, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs; L_tot < 10^5 L_sun) to empirically constrain the formation process of the first galaxies. Since UFDs have much simpler star formation histories than the halo of the…
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…
These lectures attempt to expose the most important ideas, which have been proposed to explain the formation of stars with particular emphasis on the formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. We first describe the important physical…
Over the past decade, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. The observational evidence for the existence of dark matter is reviewed: rotation curves of galaxies, weak lensing…
The first few billion years of cosmic history witnessed the rapid emergence of the most massive galaxies, yet their true space density, baryon assembly pathways, and early quenching mechanisms remain poorly constrained. Current surveys lack…
The dramatic size evolution of early-type galaxies from z ~ 2 to 0 poses a new challenge in the theory of galaxy formation, which may not be explained by the standard picture. It is shown here that the size evolution can be explained if the…
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…
Galaxy formation is at the forefront of observation and theory in cosmology. An improved understanding is essential for improving our knowledge both of the cosmological parameters, of the contents of the universe, and of our origins. In…
The cosmic dark ages and the epoch of reionization, during which the first generations of stars and galaxies formed, are among the most compelling frontiers of extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology. Here we describe an exciting new probe…
We discuss the results of recent 3D simulations of first structure formation in relationship to the formation of the first stars. On the basis of a new, high-resolution AMR simulation (spatial dynamic range = 30,000,000), we conclude that…
Starlight from galaxies plays a pivotal role throughout the process of cosmic reionisation. We present the statistics of dwarf galaxy properties at z > 7 in haloes with masses up to 10^9 solar masses, using a cosmological radiation…
We have proposed that the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may be Dark Stars (DS), powered by dark matter heating rather than by nuclear fusion. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which may be their own…
We compare the properties of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group with the simulated galaxies formed before reionization in a cosmological simulation of unprecedented spatial and mass resolution,including radiative feedback effects. We find…
We apply a simple, one-equation, galaxy formation model on top of the halos and subhalos of a high-resolution dark matter cosmological simulation to study how dwarf galaxies acquire their mass and, for better mass resolution, on over 10^5…
The current consensus is that galaxies begin as small density fluctuations in the early Universe and grow by in situ star formation and hierarchical merging. Stars begin to form relatively quickly in sub-galactic sized building blocks…