Schedule Aug 13, 2007
Cosmological Simulations of Pop. III Star Formation
Brian O'Shea (Los Alamos)

In this talk I will present an overview of recent simulations of Population III star formation in a cosmological context. Recent published and unpublished work by multiple groups of authors using fundamentally different computational methods appears to have converged to give a consistent view of Population III star formation. In the absence of a photodissociating background, Population III protostellar cores form within small (5x105 - 106 solar mass) cosmological halos. Due to the relatively poor cooling properties of molecular hydrogen, collapse of the halo core occurs quasistatically until high densities (on the order of 108 cm-3) are reached, at which point 3-body molecular hydrogen formation takes place and the collapse accelerates. The collapsing core finally forms a hydrostatic protostar with mass of ~0.001 Msun. At this point, cosmological simulations do not have sufficient physics to continue the calculations (and to determine the Population III IMF) and different methods must be considered.

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