Limits on Population III star formation in minihaloes implied by Planck

Abstract

Recently, Planck measured a value of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) optical depth due to electron scattering of $\tau =0.066\pm 0.016$. Here we show that this low value leaves essentially no room for an early partial reionisation of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by high-redshift Population III (Pop III) stars, expected to have formed in low-mass minihaloes. We perform semi-analytic calculations of reionisation which include the contribution from Pop II stars in atomic cooling haloes, calibrated with high-redshift galaxy observations, and Pop III stars in minihaloes with feedback due to Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation and metal enrichment. We find that without LW feedback or prompt metal enrichment (and assuming a minihalo escape fraction of 0.5) the Pop III star formation efficiency cannot exceed $\sim \mathrm{a}\mathrm{few}\times 10^{-4}$, without violating the constraints set by Planck data. This excludes massive Pop III star formation in typical $10^6{M}_{\odot }$ minihaloes. Including LW feedback and metal enrichment alleviates this tension, allowing large Pop III stars to form early on before they are quenched by feedback. We find that the total density of Pop III stars formed across cosmic time is $\lesssim 10^{4-5}{M}_{\odot }\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-3}$ and does not depend strongly on the feedback prescription adopted. Additionally, we perform a simple estimate of the possible impact on reionisation of X-rays produced by accretion onto black hole remnants of Pop III stars. We find that unless the accretion duty cycle is very low ($\lesssim 0.01$), this could lead to an optical depth inconsistent with Planck.

12 pages, 10 figures, replaced with version accepted by MNRAS. Added simple treatment of metal enrichment

References in corpus (17)

• A luminous quasar at a redshift of z = 7.085
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• UV Luminosity Functions at redshifts z~4 to z~10: 10000 Galaxies from HST Legacy Fields
• Cosmic Reionization and Early Star-Forming Galaxies: A Joint Analysis of New Constraints from Planck and Hubble Space Telescope
• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• Model-independent evidence in favor of an end to reionization by z~6
• Accretion onto the First Stellar Mass Black Holes
• Population III star formation in a Lambda CDM universe, II: Effects of a photodissociating background
• Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe
• Suppression of H_2 Cooling in the Ultraviolet Background
• Feedback-regulated Super Massive Black Hole Seed Formation
• Direct collapse black hole formation from synchronized pairs of atomic cooling halos
• Was Star-Formation Suppressed in High-Redshift Minihalos?
• Measurement of Galaxy Clustering at z~7.2 and the Evolution of Galaxy Bias from 3.8<z<8 in the XDF, GOODS-S AND GOODS-N
• Relative Role of Stars and Quasars in Cosmic Reionization
• Probing the star formation history using the redshift evolution of luminosity functions
• Direct collapse black hole formation via high-velocity collisions of protogalaxies

Cited by in corpus (50)

• The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes
• Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude
• Feedback-regulated star formation and escape of LyC photons from mini-haloes during reionisation
• Constraints on the Star Formation Efficiency of Galaxies During the Epoch of Reionization
• Gravitational Waves from the Remnants of the First Stars
• Descendants of the first stars: the distinct chemical signature of second generation stars
• Formation pathway of Population III coalescing binary black holes through stable mass transfer
• When did Population III star formation end?
• A tale of two sites -- I: Inferring the properties of minihalo-hosted galaxies from current observations
• A Minimalist Feedback-Regulated Model for Galaxy Formation During the Epoch of Reionization
• Gravitational wave background from Population III binary black holes consistent with cosmic reionization
• Formation of Binary Black Holes Similar to GW190521 with a Total Mass of $\sim 150M_{\odot }$ from Population III Binary Star Evolution
• Formation of GW190521 via gas accretion onto Population III stellar black hole remnants born in high-redshift minihalos
• Gravitational waves from Population III binary black holes formed by dynamical capture
• Implications of the low binary black hole aligned spins observed by LIGO
• Unique Signatures of Population III Stars in the Global 21-cm Signal
• The Brightest Ly$\alpha$ Emitter: Pop III or Black Hole?
• Tracing the first stars and galaxies of the Milky Way
• Public Release of A-SLOTH: Ancient Stars and Local Observables by Tracing Halos
• Self-consistent Semi-analytic Modeling of Feedback During Primordial Star Formation and Reionization
• Early Structure Formation Constraints on the Ultra-Light Axion in the Post-Inflation Scenario
• Chirp Mass and Spin of Binary Black Holes from First Star Remnants
• Fuzzy Dark Matter and the 21cm Power Spectrum
• A New Statistical Model for Population III Supernova Rates: Discriminating Between $\Lambda$CDM and WDM Cosmologies
• Rapid growth of seed black holes during early bulge formation
• Exploring the nature of the Lyman-$\alpha$ emitter CR7
• Self-consistent semi-analytic models of the first stars
• A tale of two sites -- II: Inferring the properties of minihalo-hosted galaxies with upcoming 21-cm interferometers
• Signatures of metal-free star formation in Planck 2015 Polarization Data
• Dynamical evolution of Population III stellar systems and the resulting binary statistics
• Formation of Massive Population III Galaxies through Photoionization Feedback: A Possible Explanation for CR7
• Direct collapse to supermassive black hole seeds: the critical conditions for suppression of ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ cooling
• The Epoch of Reionization in the R_h=ct Universe
• Gravitational waves from Population III binary black holes are consistent with LIGO/Virgo O3a data for the chirp mass larger than $\sim 20M_{\odot }$
• Detecting strongly lensed supernovae at z ~ 5-7 with LSST
• Long gamma-ray burst rate at very high redshift
• Gravitational waves from mergers of Population III binary black holes: roles played by two evolution channels
• Beyond the first galaxies primordial black holes shine
• The high-redshift tail of stellar reionization in LCDM is beyond the reach of the low-$\ell$ CMB
• A Global Semi-Analytic Model of the First Stars and Galaxies Including Dark Matter Halo Merger Histories
• Probing the Early History of Cosmic Reionization by Future Cosmic Microwave Background Experiments
• How to confirm the existence of population III stars by observations of gravitational waves
• Cosmic Reionization and the First Nonlinear Structures in the Universe
• Black holes at cosmic dawn in the redshifted 21cm signal of HI
• Reionization in the Light of Dark Stars
• Effects of chemically homogeneous evolution of the first stars on the 21-cm signal and reionization
• Cosmological contribution from population III stars in ultracompact minihalos
• Gravitational wave backgrounds from coalescing black hole binaries at cosmic dawn: an upper bound
• Star Formation for Predictive Primordial Galaxy Formation
• From Dark Matter Minihalos to Large-Scale Radiative Feedback: A Self-Consistent 3D Simulation of the First Stars and Galaxies using Neural Networks