The first stars: formation of binaries and small multiple systems

By A. Stacy, Thomas Greif, Volker Bromm. 2009

293 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the formation of metal-free, Population III (Pop III), stars within a minihalo at z ~ 20 with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation, starting from cosmological initial conditions. Employing a hierarchical, zoom-in procedure, we achieve sufficient numerical resolution to follow the collapsing gas in the center of the minihalo up to number densities of 10^12 cm^-3. This allows us to study the protostellar accretion onto the initial hydrostatic core, which we represent as a growing sink particle, in improved physical detail. The accretion process, and in particular its termination, governs the final masses that were reached by the first stars. The primordial initial mass function (IMF), in turn, played an important role in determining to what extent the first stars drove early cosmic evolution. We continue our simulation for 5000 yr after the first sink particle has formed. During this time period, a disk-like configuration is assembled around the first protostar. The disk is gravitationally unstable, develops a pronounced spiral structure, and fragments into several other protostellar seeds. At the end of the simulation, a small multiple system has formed, dominated by a binary with masses ~ 40 M_Sun and ~ 10 M_Sun. If Pop III stars were to form typically in binaries or small multiples, the standard model of primordial star formation, where single, isolated stars are predicted to form in minihaloes, would have to be modified. This would have crucial consequences for the observational signature of the first stars, such as their nucleosynthetic pattern, and the gravitational-wave emission from possible Pop III black-hole binaries.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/81cc333eae46356d2d44fdcdfa96eb4bed0773c7

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Citations in the corpus

What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…idea that the first stars are very massive, due to either fragmentation or feedback effects (e.g., Glover et al., 2008; McKee & Tan, 2008; Turk et al., 2009; Trenti & Stiavelli, 2009; Stacy et al., 2010; Greif et al., 2011), casting some doubt on the the role of Population III remnants as BH seeds.”
The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Earlier simulations had underestimated this effect, and newer, higher resolution, simulations find that the typical mass of pop III stars is close to ∼ 40M (e.g. Stacy et al., 2010).”
Formation and evolution of primordial protostellar systems (2012, background): “…of the Royal Astronomical Society C© 2012 RAS Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/424/1/399/1009176 by guest on 26 July 2018 on to the disc and the efficient cooling of the disc by molecular hydrogen (Clark et al. 2008, 2011a,b; Stacy et al. 2010; Greif et al. 2011a).”
LIMITING ACCRETION ONTO MASSIVE STARS BY FRAGMENTATION-INDUCED STARVATION (2010, background): “Indeed, current numerical simulations provide the first hints that this might be the case (Clark et al. 2008; Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010).”
Formation of supermassive black holes (2010, background): “As mentioned, it is not clear if the very first stars formed in singles or multiples per halo, with the latter option leading to a less top-heavy mass function (Clark et al, 2008a; Stacy et al, 2009; Turk et al, 2009).”
Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude (2018, background): “Such Pop-III stars are expected to form with masses of ∼10–103Me (Abel et al. 2002; Bromm et al. 2002; Yoshida et al. 2008; Stacy et al. 2010; Greif et al. 2011a; Hirano et al. 2015) in molecular cooling halos with Tvir104 K (Haiman et al. 1996; Abel et al. 1997; Tegmark et al. 1997).”
Building up the Population III initial mass function from cosmological initial conditions (2016, background): “More recent simulations have found that fragmentation of the central gas configuration will instead allow for a wider range of Pop III masses (e.g. Clark et al 2008; 2011a; Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010; Stacy & Bromm 2013, 2014).”
Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “This may lead to the formation of multiple stars per halo (Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010; Clark et al. 2011; Greif et al. 2012; Latif et al. 2013e).”
TESS Eclipsing Binary Stars. I. Short-cadence Observations of 4584 Eclipsing Binaries in Sectors 1–26 (2021, background): “Understanding binaries means understanding stellar formation and evolution (Stacy et al. 2010), internal stellar structure by way of tidal interactions, and/or tidally induced pulsations (Thompson et al. 2012), accretion physics in semi-detached binaries (Bisikalo 2010), and much more.”
The First Stars: Mass Growth Under Protostellar Feedback (2011, methodology): “Inclusion of feedback also led to a massive binary system instead of a higher-order multiple like that seen in, e.g., Stacy et al. (2010) and our ‘no-feedback’ case, since the feedback quenched disk growth and fragmentation early on.”
Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe (2011, methodology): “In the context of the current models on the formation (Krumholz et al. 2009; Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010) and collapse (Heger et al. 2003; Meynet & Maeder 2005; Georgy et al. 2009; Linden et al. 2010) of primordial stars, an attractive and realistic alternative to the hypothesis of…”
THE BIRTH OF A GALAXY: PRIMORDIAL METAL ENRICHMENT AND STELLAR POPULATIONS (2010, background): “Recently, several studies have suggested that while fragmentation at times prior to the formation of the first protostar may occur at scales of 1000 − 2000 AU, such fragmentation is likely to result in high-mass, low-multiplicity groups (Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010).”
Signatures of X-rays in the early Universe (2012, result): “…Crowther et al. 2010; Kaaret et al. 2011), as well as theoretical studies proposing a high binary fraction among the first stars (Turk et al. 2009; Stacy et al. 2010), motivate a higher contribution from HMXBs in early galaxies (Mirabel et al. 2011; Fragos et al. 2012) (iii) The recent upper…”
SIMULATIONS ON A MOVING MESH: THE CLUSTERED FORMATION OF POPULATION III PROTOSTARS (2011, background): “Following up on this result, sink particles were recently used in studies of the fragmentation of primordial gas in minihalos (Clark et al. 2008; Stacy et al. 2010; Clark et al. 2011a).”
FORMATION OF PRIMORDIAL SUPERMASSIVE STARS BY RAPID MASS ACCRETION (2013, background): “…Institute, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan 5 Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan Omukai & Palla 2003; McKee & Tan 2008; Stacy et al. 2010; Hosokawa et al. 2011b, 2012b; Stacy et al. 2012; Susa 2013).”