Related papers: The First Stars: Final Remarks
Observations and theory of the IMF are briefly reviewed. Slight variations have been observed, although they are difficult to prove unambiguously. Most detailed theoretical models reproduce the IMF, but because they use different…
Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of…
The galaxies of the Local Group that are currently forming stars can serve as our laboratories for understanding star formation and the evolution of massive stars. In this talk I will summarize what I think we've learned about these topics…
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…
First stars play crucial roles in development of the universe, influencing events like cosmic reionization and the chemical enrichment. While first stars are conventionally thought to form at around $z \sim 20-30$ in the standard $\Lambda$…
The determination of the star-formation history of the Universe is a key goal of modern cosmology, as it is crucial to our understanding of how structure in the Universe forms and evolves. A picture has built up over recent years,…
Studies of molecular clouds and young stars near the sun have provided invaluable insights into the process of star formation. Indeed, much of our physical understanding of this topic has been derived from such studies. Perhaps the two most…
This chapter discusses the use and possibilities of optical and infrared interferometry to study star formation. The chapter starts with a brief overview of the star formation process and highlights the open questions from an observational…
We review the theories and observations of high-mass star formation emphasizing the differences with those of low-mass star formation. We hereafter describe the progress expected to be achieved with Herschel, thanks notably to Key…
The first stars to form in the Universe -- the so-called Population III stars -- bring an end to the cosmological Dark Ages, and exert an important influence on the formation of subsequent generations of stars and on the assembly of the…
In this work we shortly review several aspects of the physics of neutron stars. After the introduction we present a brief historical overview of the idea of neutron stars as well as of the theoretical and observational developments that…
Star forming galaxies represent a valuable tracer of cosmic history. Recent observational progress with Hubble Space Telescope has led to the discovery and study of the earliest-known galaxies corresponding to a period when the Universe was…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
Starting with the assertion that the problem of isolated, single star formation is essentially solved, this paper examines some of the missing steps needed to go from there to understanding the star formation history of the Universe. Along…
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 standard model for the formation of structure assumes that there existed small fluctuations in the early universe that grew due to gravitational instability. The origins of these fluctuations are as yet unclear. In this work we propose…
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…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…
The first stars were key drivers of early cosmic evolution. We review the main physical elements of the current consensus view, positing that the first stars were predominantly very massive. We continue with a discussion of important open…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…