Related papers: The First Stars: Final Remarks
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…
From the time the first stars formed over 13 billion years ago to the present, star formation has had an unexpectedly dynamic history. At first, the star formation rate density increased dramatically, reaching a peak 10 billion years ago…
The properties of the first galaxies are shaped in large part by the first generations of stars, which emit high energy radiation and unleash both large amounts of mechanical energy and the first heavy elements when they explode as…
Paramount among the processes that ended the cosmic `dark ages' must have been the formation of the first generation of stars (the so-called Population III). We summarize recent progress in constraining its nature, and we discuss the basic…
The first stars fundamentally transformed the early universe by emitting the first light and by producing the first heavy elements. These effects were predetermined by the mass distribution of the first stars, which is thought to have been…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
How and when did the first generation of stars form at the end of the cosmic dark ages? Quite generically, within variants of the cold dark matter model of cosmological structure formation, the first sources of light are expected to form in…
These lectures summarize our basic understanding of the emergence of cosmic structures, the epoch of first light, the survival of early substructure in present-day galaxy halos.
I review (1) Physics of Star Formation & Open Questions; (2) Structure & Dynamics of Star-Forming Clouds & Young Clusters; (3) Star Formation Rates: Observations & Theoretical Implications.
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…
The question of how much light the first stars produced is fundamental to models of the Universe's development. But observations have so far failed to agree: is the answer a lot, or not very much at all?
From studying the cosmic microwave background, we know our Universe started out very simple. It was by and large homogeneous and isotropic, with small fluctuations that can be described by linear perturbation theory. In stark contrast, the…
The earliest generation of stars, far from being a mere novelty, transformed the universe from darkness to light. The first atoms to form after the Big Bang filled the universe with atomic hydrogen and a few light elements. As gravity…
In this chapter, we will cover how stars form from the stellar nurseries that are giant molecular clouds. We will first review the physical processes that compete to regulate star formation. We then review star formation in turbulent,…
Motivated by recent progress in the study of early-type galaxies owing to technological advances, the launch of new space telescopes and large ground-based surveys, we attempt a short review of our current understanding of the recent…
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…
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…
Large telescopes have allowed astronomers to observe galaxies that formed as early as 850 million years after the Big Bang. We predict when the first star that astronomers can observe formed in the universe, accounting for the first time…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
I briefly review recent observations of regions forming low mass stars. The discussion is cast in the form of seven questions that have been partially answered, or at least illuminated, by new data. These are the following: where do stars…