WIMP DM and first stars: suppression of fragmentation in primordial star formation

Abstract

We present the first 3D simulations to include the effects of dark matter annihilation feedback during the collapse of primordial mini-halos. We begin our simulations from cosmological initial conditions and account for dark matter annihilation in our treatment of the chemical and thermal evolution of the gas. The dark matter is modelled using an analytical density profile that responds to changes in the peak gas density. We find that the gas can collapse to high densities despite the additional energy input from the dark matter. No objects supported purely by dark matter annihilation heating are formed in our simulations. However, we find that the dark matter annihilation heating has a large effect on the evolution of the gas following the formation of the first protostar. Previous simulations without dark matter annihilation found that protostellar discs around Population III stars rapidly fragmented, forming multiple protostars that underwent mergers or ejections. When dark matter annihilation is included, however, these discs become stable to radii of 1000 AU or more. In the cases where fragmentation does occur, it is a wide binary that is formed.

15 pages. Published in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (29)

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• Dark Stars: A Review
• Revisiting The First Galaxies: The epoch of Population III stars
• The Formation of Supermassive Black Holes from Population III.1 Seeds. I. Cosmic Formation Histories and Clustering Properties
• Population III Star Formation In Large Cosmological Simulations I. Halo Temporal and Physical Environment
• The First Stars: formation under X-ray feedback
• The Mutual Interaction Between Population III Stars and Self-Annihilating Dark Matter
• Contributions of dark matter annihilation to the global 21cm spectrum observed by the EDGES experiment
• Constraining Dark Matter properties with the first generation of stars
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• Dark Stars Powered by Self-Interacting Dark Matter
• Compatibility of JWST results with exotic halos
• On the operation of the chemothermal instability in primordial star-forming clouds
• Heating of galactic gas by dark matter annihilation in ultracompact minihalos
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• Stability and pulsation of the first dark stars
• Dark Matter Annihilation Feedback in cosmological simulations I: Code convergence and idealised halos
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• The Sun and stars: Giving light to dark matter
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