Formation of the First Stars and Quasars

Abstract

We review observable signatures of the first generation of stars and low-luminosity quasars, including the metal enrichment, radiation background, and dust opacity/emission that they produce. We compute the formation history of collapsed baryonic halos based on an extension of the Press-Schechter formalism, incorporating the effects of pressure and H2-dissociation, and calibrate this history to observational data at redshifts z<5. To be consistent with the lack of faint point-sources in the Hubble Deep Field, we introduce a lower limit of 75 km/s for the circular velocities of halos harboring central black holes. Based on our models, we predict that future satellite instruments such as MAP, Planck, and NGST will be able to detect the signatures small star clusters and low-luminosity quasars at redshifts exceeding z=10.

10 pages, 5 figures included. Invited talk at the 32nd COSPAR Scientific Assemby, 15-17 July, 1998, Nagoya, Japan; to appear in Adv. of Space Research

References in corpus (6)

• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• Microwave Background Constraints on Cosmological Parameters
• Observational Signatures of the First Quasars
• Spectroscopic Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole in NGC 4486B
• A Lower Limit to the Universal Density of Metals at z \sim 3
• Signatures of Intergalactic Dust From the First Supernovae

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Implications of the cosmic infrared background excess for the cosmic star formation