Radiation magnetohydrodynamics simulations of Population III star formation during the Epoch of Reionization

Abstract

Cosmological simulations find that pockets of star-forming gas could remain pristine up until the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) due to the inhomogeneous nature of metal mixing and enrichment in the early Universe. Such pristine clouds could have formed Population III stars, which could have distinct properties compared to their very high redshift ($z\ge 20$) counterparts. We investigate how Population III stars form and grow during the EoR, and whether the resulting mass distribution varies with environment or across cosmic time. We perform high-resolution ($7.5\mathrm{au}$) radiation-magnetohydrodynamics simulations of identical primordial clouds exposed to the CMB appropriate for $z=30$ and $z=6$, respectively, as part of the POPSICLE project. We also run a simulation at $z=6$ with a strong external Lyman-Werner (LW) background, to span across radiative environments which could host metal-free clumps during the EoR. In the limit of no external LW radiation, we find that while the evolution of the most massive star ($M_{\star }\approx 70{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$) is almost identical between $z=30$ and $z=6$, the latter exhibits less fragmentation, leading to a smaller cluster of stars with a higher median stellar mass. In the limit of high external LW radiation, we see vigorous accretion and high star formation efficiencies, leading to the formation of very massive ($M_{\star }>100{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$) stars. Our results suggest that Population III IMF could vary with redshift simply due to the CMB, independent of the environment. We find that less massive and more compact Pop III star clusters could form during the EoR as compared to $z\ge 20$, with the formation of very massive and supermassive stars likely in strongly irradiated environments.

10 pages, 11 figures, accepted by A&A

References in corpus (47)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• CMasher: Scientific colormaps for making accessible, informative and 'cmashing' plots
• Primordial Star Formation under the Influence of Far Ultraviolet Radiation: 1540 Cosmological Halos and the Stellar Mass Distribution
• Hydrogen reionisation ends by $z=5.3$: Lyman-$\alpha$ optical depth measured by the XQR-30 sample
• Fluctuations in the High-Redshift Lyman-Werner Background: Close Halo Pairs as the Origin of Supermassive Black Holes
• Population III star formation in a Lambda CDM universe, II: Effects of a photodissociating background
• Limiting Accretion onto Massive Stars by Fragmentation-Induced Starvation
• A robust numerical scheme for highly compressible magnetohydrodynamics: Nonlinear stability, implementation and tests
• Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe
• Suppression of H_2 Cooling in the Ultraviolet Background
• The Evolution of Supermassive Population III Stars
• Diagnostics for PopIII galaxies and Direct Collapse Black Holes in the early universe
• Constraining the primordial initial mass function with stellar archaeology
• Metal-Free Gas Supply at the Edge of Reionization: Late-Epoch Population III Star Formation
• When did Population III star formation end?
• The influence of streaming velocities and Lyman-Werner radiation on the formation of the first stars
• Cradles of the first stars: self-shielding, halo masses, and multiplicity
• Formation sites of Population III star formation: The effects of different levels of rotation and turbulence on the fragmentation behavior of primordial gas
• JWST-JADES. Possible Population III signatures at z=10.6 in the halo of GN-z11
• The critical dark matter halo mass for Population III star formation: dependence on Lyman-Werner radiation, baryon-dark matter streaming velocity, and redshift
• Predicting the locations of possible long-lived low-mass first stars: Importance of satellite dwarf galaxies
• Impact of the cosmic background radiation on the initial mass function of metal-poor stars
• Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies: unveiling the minimum mass of the first stars
• Magnetic Fields in the Formation of the First Stars. I. Theory vs. Simulation
• Fragmentation induced starvation in Population III star formation: a resolution study
• A needle in a haystack? Catching Pop III stars in the Epoch of Reionization: I. Pop III star forming environments
• Characterization of Population III Stars with Stellar Atmosphere and Evolutionary Modeling and Predictions of their Observability with the James Webb Space Telescope
• Magnetic fields in the formation of the first stars.--II Results
• The Challenges of Identifying Population III Stars in the Early Universe
• Conditions for detecting lensed Population III galaxies in blind surveys with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Roman Space Telescope and Euclid
• Quokka: A code for two-moment AMR radiation hydrodynamics on GPUs
• BIFROST: simulating compact subsystems in star clusters using a hierarchical fourth-order forward symplectic integrator code
• VETTAM: A scheme for radiation hydrodynamics with adaptive mesh refinement using the variable Eddington tensor method
• A-SLOTH reveals the nature of the first stars
• From dark matter halos to pre-stellar cores: High resolution follow-up of cosmological Lyman-Werner simulations
• Impact of magnetic fields on Population III star formation
• The statistical properties of stars at redshift, z=5, compared with the present epoch
• Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the first star formation: the effect of ambipolar diffusion
• A hide-and-seek game: Looking for Population III stars during the Epoch of Reionization through the HeII$\lambda$1640 line
• The THESAN-ZOOM project: Population III star formation continues until the end of reionization
• Variation of the low-mass end of the stellar initial mass function with redshift and metallicity
• Efficient semi-analytic modelling of Pop III star formation from Cosmic Dawn to Reionization
• Formation of metal-free binaries: Impact of H${}_2$ line cooling and CIE cooling
• Population III star formation in the presence of turbulence, magnetic fields and ionizing radiation feedback
• Magnetic fields limit the mass of Population III stars even before the onset of protostellar radiation feedback
• Ionization degree and magnetic diffusivity in star-forming clouds with different metallicities
• Spectral Signatures of Population III and Envelope-stripped Stars in Galaxies at the Epoch of Reionization