Related papers: Primordial Star Forming Regions in a CDM Universe
We investigate the possibility of very early formation of primordial star clusters from high-\sigma perturbations in cold dark matter dominated structure formation scenarios. For this we have developed a powerful 2-level hierarchical…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
(abridged) We use large cosmological simulations to study the origin of primordial star-forming clouds in a Lambda CDM universe, by following the formation of dark matter halos and the cooling of gas within them. To model the physics of…
The formation of the first stars in the high-redshift Universe is a sensitive probe of the small-scale, particle physics nature of dark matter (DM). We carry out cosmological simulations of primordial star formation in ultra-light,…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
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…
Cosmic structure originated from minute density perturbations in an almost homogeneous universe. The first stars are believed to be very massive and luminous, providing the first ionizing radiation and heavy elements to the universe and…
We use a spherical hydrodynamics code to show that in cold dark matter cosmologies, the first stars form at z=50 through the direct collapse of gas in low-mass systems (approx 10^4 solar masses). Photons from the first stars easily…
Recent spacecraft observations exploring solar system properties impact standard paradigms of the formation of stars, planets and comets. We stress the unexpected cloud of microscopic dust resulting from the DEEP IMPACT mission, and the…
In the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) theory of structure formation, virialized minihalos (with T_vir}<10^4 K) form in abundance at high redshift (z>6), during the cosmic ``dark ages.'' The hydrogen in these minihalos, the first nonlinear…
We model gas cooling in high-resolution N-body simulations in order to investigate the formation of the first generation of stars. We follow a region of a LCDM universe especially selected to contain a rich cluster by the present day. The…
We report on simulations of the formation of the first stars in the Universe, where we identify regions of hot atomic gas (fH2 < 10-6) at densities above 10-14 g/cc, heated to temperatures ranging between 3000 and 8000 K. Within this…
In the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) theory of structure formation, virialized minihalos (with T_vir = 10,000 K or less) form in abundance at high redshift (z > 6), during the cosmic "dark ages." The hydrogen in these minihalos, the first…
We present results of cosmological N-body hydrodynamic chemistry simulations of primordial structure growth and evolution in a scenario with warm dark matter (WDM) having a mass of 3 keV (thermal relic) and compare with a model consisting…
We use cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with unprecedented resolution to study the formation of primordial stars in an ionized gas at high redshifts. Our approach includes all the relevant atomic and molecular physics to follow the…
We have included the chemical rate network responsible for the formation of molecular Hydrogen in the N-body hydrodynamic code, Hydra, in order to study the formation of the first cosmological at redshifts between 10 and 50. We have tested…
Primordial star formation appears to result in stars at least an order of magnitude more massive than modern star formation. It has been proposed that the transition from primordial to modern initial mass functions occurs due to the onset…
To constrain the nature of the very first stars, we investigate the collapse and fragmentation of primordial, metal-free gas clouds. We explore the physics of primordial star formation by means of three-dimensional simulations of the dark…
The minimum mass that a virialized gas cloud must have in order to be able to cool in a Hubble time is computed, using a detailed treatment of the chemistry of molecular hydrogen. With a simple model for halo profiles, we reduce the problem…