The First Stars

By Volker Bromm, R. Larson. 2003

264 citations recorded by the source corpus.

▪ Abstract We review recent theoretical results on the formation of the first stars in the universe, and emphasize related open questions. In particular, we discuss the initial conditions for Population III star formation, as given by variants of the cold dark matter cosmology. Numerical simulations have investigated the collapse and the fragmentation of metal-free gas, showing that the first stars were predominantly very massive. The exact determination of the stellar masses, and the precise form of the primordial initial mass function, is still hampered by our limited understanding of the accretion physics and the protostellar feedback effects. We address the importance of heavy elements in bringing about the transition from an early star formation mode dominated by massive stars to the familiar mode dominated by low-mass stars at later times. We show how complementary observations, both at high redshifts and in our local cosmic neighborhood, can be utilized to probe the first epoch of star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d05774c20dee9a72bb543982f7297343c21f46ee

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The halo mass function from the dark ages through the present day (2006, background): “The reionization of the universe is thought to be caused by some combination of metal-free stars, early galaxies and accreting black holes (see e.g. Bromm & Larson 2004; Ciardi & Ferrara 2005; Reed et al. 2005 and references therein), all of which are expected to lie in dark matter haloes, the…”
Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe (2006, background): “Understanding the formation and properties of the first stars, formed out of pure H/He gas at the end of the cosmic dark ages, is one of the key problems in modern cosmology (e.g. Barkana & Loeb 2001; Bromm & Larson 2004).”
THE GENERATION OF STRONG MAGNETIC FIELDS DURING THE FORMATION OF THE FIRST STARS (2010, background): “Over the course of the last decade, a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the physical processes governing the birth of the first stars and their influence on later epochs of structure formation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].”
HE 1327–2326, an Unevolved Star with [Fe/H] < –5.0. I. A Comprehensive Abundance Analysis (2005, unknown): “Some recent theoretical studies (Bromm & Larson 2004 and references therein) on early star formation predict the formation of exclusively massive and/or supermassive stars from primordial clouds.”
Foreground simulations for the LOFAR-epoch of reionization experiment (2008, background): “…witnessed a flurry of theoretical activities to predict reionization sources and their impact on the IGM (e.g. Barkana & Loeb 2001; Loeb & Barkana 2001; Ciardi, Ferrara & White 2003a; Ciardi, Stoehr & White 2003b; Bromm & Larson 2004; Iliev et al. 2007; Thomas & Zaroubi 2007; Zaroubi et al. 2007).”
THE DISCOVERY AND ANALYSIS OF VERY METAL-POOR STARS IN THE GALAXY (2005, background): “The site of this first element production has been argued to be associated with the explosions of stars of several hundred up to a thousand solar masses (Bromm & Larson 2004).”