The First Billion Years project: the impact of stellar radiation on the co-evolution of Populations II and III

By Jarrett L. Johnson, Claudio Dalla Vecchia, S. Khochfar. 2012

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With the first metal enrichment by Population (Pop) III supernovae (SNe), the formation of the first metal-enriched, Pop II stars becomes possible. In turn, Pop III star formation and early metal enrichment are slowed by the high energy radiation emitted by Pop II stars. Thus, through the SNe and radiation they produce, Populations II and III coevolve in the early Universe, one regulated by the other. We present large (4 Mpc) 3 , high resolution cosmological simulations in which we self-consistently model early metal enrichment and the stellar radiation responsible for the destruction of the coolants (H2 and HD) required for Pop III star formation. We find that the moleculedissociating stellar radiation produced both locally and over cosmological distances reduces the Pop III star formation rate (SFR) at z > 10 by up to an order of magnitude, to a rate per comoving volume of < 10 −4 M⊙ yr −1 Mpc −3 , compared to the case in which this radiation is not included. However, we find that the effect of LW feedback is to enhance the amount of Pop II star formation. We attribute this to the reduced rate at which gas is blown out of dark matter haloes by SNe in the simulation with LW feedback, which results in larger reservoirs for metal-enriched star formation. Even accounting for metal enrichment, molecule-dissociating radiation and the strong suppression of low-mass galaxy formation due to reionization at z < 10, we find that Pop III stars are still formed at a rate of » 10 −5 M⊙ yr −1 Mpc −3 down to z » 6. This suggests that the majority of primordial pair-instability SNe that may be uncovered in future surveys will be found at z < 10. We also find that the molecule-dissociating radiation emitted from Pop II stars may destroy H2 molecules at a high enough rate to suppress gas cooling and allow for the formation of supermassive primordial stars which collapse to form » 10 5 M⊙ black holes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b4282e62c889c3d04224020a9aa545b296244275

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Ferrara
2. Volker Bromm
3. Naoki Yoshida
4. K. Omukai
5. T. Hosokawa
6. H. Yorke
7. S. Hirano
8. M. Latif

In Instrumentation

1. T. Hosokawa
2. K. Omukai
3. M. Latif
4. A. Ferrara
5. Naoki Yoshida
6. S. Hirano
7. H. Umeda
8. H. Yorke

Citations in the corpus

• Primordial star formation under the influence of far ultraviolet radiation: 1540 cosmological haloes and the stellar mass distribution (2015, result): “10− 15 (e.g., Agarwal et al. 2012; Johnson et al. 2013).”
• Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “Supermassive stars (SMSs)3 are considered as potential cradles for the formation of DCBHs (Begelman 2010; Volonteri & Begelman 2010; Ball et al. 2011; Hosokawa et al. 2012a, 2013; Schleicher et al. 2013; Johnson et al. 2013b; Ferrara et al. 2014).”
• FORMATION OF PRIMORDIAL SUPERMASSIVE STARS BY RAPID MASS ACCRETION (2013, background): “Although this is less likely with the lower metallicities (e.g., Montero et al. 2012), recent studies suggest that this might occur in the early universe (e.g., Whalen et al. 2012; Johnson et al. 2013b).”
• ONE HUNDRED FIRST STARS: PROTOSTELLAR EVOLUTION AND THE FINAL MASSES (2013, background): “Then, if the halo is the densest structure within a 2 physical kpc radius around itself, we assume the halo has not been influenced by supernova explosions of nearby stars (e.g., Ritter et al. 2012) nor by radiative feedback (e.g., O’Shea & Norman 2008; Agarwal et al. 2012; Johnson et al. 2013).”