Lighting the Universe with Filaments
Abstract
The first stars in the universe form when chemically pristine gas heats as it falls into dark-matter potential wells, cools radiatively because of the formation of molecular hydrogen, and becomes self-gravitating. Using supercomputer simulations, we demonstrated that the stars’ properties depend critically on the currently unknown nature of the dark matter. If the dark-matter particles have intrinsic velocities that wipe out small-scale structure, then the first stars form in filaments with lengths on the order of the free-streaming scale, which can be ~1020 meters (~3 kiloparsecs, corresponding to a baryonic mass of ~107 solar masses) for realistic “warm dark matter” candidates. Fragmentation of the filaments forms stars with a range of masses, which may explain the observed peculiar element abundance pattern of extremely metal-poor stars, whereas coalescence of fragments and stars during the filament's ultimate collapse may seed the supermassive black holes that lurk in the centers of most massive galaxies.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- September 2007
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.1146676
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0709.2165
- Bibcode:
- 2007Sci...317.1527G
- Keywords:
-
- ASTRONOMY;
- Astrophysics;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- Science, 14, September, 2007. 17 pages, 2 +3 figures with SOM. Full resolution paper can be found at http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~gao/first/first.html