Fragmentation of star-forming clouds enriched with the first dust

By R. Schneider, K. Omukai, A. Ferrara. 2006

236 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The thermal and fragmentation properties of star forming clouds have important consequences on the corresponding characteristic stellar mass. The initial composition of the gas within these clouds is a record of the nucleosynthetic products of previous stellar generations. In this paper, we present a model for the evolution of star forming clouds enriched by metals and dust from the first supernovae (SNe), resulting from the explosions of metal-free progenitors with masses in the range 12-30 M ⊙ and 140-260 M ⊙ . Using a self-consistent approach, we show that: (i) metals depleted on to dust grains play a fundamental role, enabling fragmentation to solar or subsolar mass scales already at metallicities Z cr = 10 -6 Z ⊙ ; (ii) even at metallicities as high as 10 -2 Z ⊙ , metals diffused in the gas phase lead to fragment mass scales which are? 100 M ⊙ ; (iii) C atoms are strongly depleted on to amorphous carbon grains and CO molecules so that C II plays a minor role in gas cooling, leaving O I as the main gas-phase cooling agent in low-metallicity clouds. These conclusions hold independently of the assumed SN progenitors and suggest that the onset of low-mass star formation is conditioned to the presence of dust in the parent clouds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3240e88f07fcba5c345c2ebb3f29b69638f206ed

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Volker Bromm
2. Tom Abel
3. John H. Wise
4. S. Glover
5. M. Norman
6. S. Khochfar
7. A. Ferrara
8. Jarrett L. Johnson

Citations in the corpus

• FORMATION RATES OF POPULATION III STARS AND CHEMICAL ENRICHMENT OF HALOS DURING THE REIONIZATION ERA (2009, background): “When the second-generation halo has a virial temperature Tvir ≈ 104 K, the metallicity of its gas is expected to have been enriched to Z 10−4 Z , high enough to mark a transition toward a different mode of star formation, especially if some dust is present (Schneider et al. 2006; Clark et al. 2008).”
• Probing the formation of the first low‐mass stars with stellar archaeology (2007, background): “It is also consistent with the theory based on dust cooling (Schneider et al. 2006), which predicts a much lower critical metallicity.”
• Population III stars: hidden or disappeared? (2007, background): “In fact, the associated increase of the Jeans (or more precisely, filtering) scale inhibits the collapse of low mass halos which are more likely to be relatively uncontaminated (Schneider et al. 2006) with respect to larger ones which are genetically polluted by their merging progenitors.”
• THE BIRTH OF A GALAXY: PRIMORDIAL METAL ENRICHMENT AND STELLAR POPULATIONS (2010, background): “…Theoretische Studien, SchlossWolfsbrunnenweg 35, 69118 Heidelberg, Germany metallicity that is ∼ 10−6Z⊙ if dust cooling is efficient (Omukai et al. 2005; Schneider et al. 2006; Clark et al. 2008) and ∼ 10−3.5Z⊙ otherwise (Bromm et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2009), where the gas can cool rapidly,…”
• Can Supermassive Black Holes Form in Metal-enriched High-Redshift Protogalaxies? (2008, methodology): “Dynamical Interactions and Accretion Since dust-induced fragmentation takes place at high densities, a dense protostellar cluster is expected to form (Omukai et al. 2005; Schneider et al. 2006; Clark et al. 2008).”
• The first galaxies : assembly, cooling and the onset of turbulence (2008, background): “10 −5 Z⊙, where much of the uncertainty in the predicted value results from uncertainties in the dust composition and the degree of gas-phase depletion (Schneider et al. 2002, 2006).”
• The First Stars (2012, methodology): “…the main focus of their study was on the fragmentation brought about by dust cooling in low metallicity systems (see e.g. Omukai et al. 2005, Schneider et al. 2006 or Dopcke et al. 2011 for more on this topic), they also studied the behaviour of the gas in the Z = 0 case for the purpose of…”
• The transition from population III to population II-I star formation (2010, result): “Different studies suggest discrepant values with Zcrit varying between∼ 10−6 Z⊙ (e.g. Schneider et al. 2006) and ∼ 10−3 Z⊙ (e.g. Bromm & Loeb 2003)1.”
• Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. II. Central Gravitational Collapse (2007, background): “Some examples of positive feedback include enhanced H2 formation in relic H ii regions (Ferrara 1998; O’Shea et al. 2005; Johnson et al. 2007) and dust and metal-line cooling (Glover 2003; Schneider et al. 2006; Jappsen et al. 2007a).”
• Star Formation at Very Low Metallicity. I. Chemistry and Cooling at Low Densities (2007, unknown): “This is the approach used by Schneider et al. (2006).”
• Early Cosmological H II/He III Regions and Their Impact on Second-Generation Star Formation (2006, background): “The gas temperature can be kept low at high densities by dust thermal emission, which brings the collapse mass scale to the ‘‘opacity limited’’ value of <1M (Low & Lynden-Bell 1976; Schneider et al. 2006).”
• Possible indirect confirmation of the existence of Pop III massive stars by gravitational wave (2014, background): “In the polluted gas, low-mass Pop II stars are expected to be formed because of the efficient metal and dust cooling (Omukai et al. 2005; Schneider et al. 2006; Dopcke et al. 2013).”
• Evolution of Dust in Primordial Supernova Remnants: Can Dust Grains Formed in the Ejecta Survive and Be Injected into the Early Interstellar Medium? (2007, background): “…the fragmentation of a star-forming cloud into low-mass gas clumps of 0.1Y1M even for the met- allicity of 10 6 to 10 5 Z (Omukai et al. 2005; Schneider et al. 2006), although very massive stars of k100M are considered to be formed up to Z ’10 3:5 Z without the effect of dust (Bromm et al.…”
• Formation of supermassive black holes (2010, background): “This first episode of efficient star formation can foster the formation of very compact nuclear star clusters (Schneider et al, 2006; Clark et al, 2008b) where star collisions can lead to the formation of a VMS, possibly leaving a MBH remnant with mass in the range ∼ 102 − 104M (Devecchi and…”
• THE SPECTRAL EVOLUTION OF THE FIRST GALAXIES. I. JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE DETECTION LIMITS AND COLOR CRITERIA FOR POPULATION III GALAXIES (2011, background): “15 (Scannapieco et al. 2003; Schneider et al. 2006a; Tornatore, Ferrara & Schneider 2007; Johnson, Greif & Bromm 2008; Johnson et al. 2009; Stiavelli & Trenti 2010; Johnson 2010), and this could in principle allow their integrated signatures to be detected with the upcoming James Webb Space…”
• Suppression of H2 Cooling in the Ultraviolet Background (2007, background): “— Enhanced H2 formation in relic H ii regions (e.g., Ferrara 1998; O’Shea et al. 2005; Johnson et al. 2007) and ahead of the H ii ionization front (Ricotti et al. 2001; Ahn & Shapiro 2007), dust and metal line cooling (Glover 2003; Schneider et al. 2006; Jappsen et al. 2007), 2.”