Fragmentation in Population III Galaxies Formed through Ionizing Radiation

Population III stars forming in minihalos tend to be relatively inefficient, with each minihalo hosting one or a small number of stars which are more massive than local stars, but still challenging to observe directly at high redshift. Here we explore a possible mechanism for the generation of larger clusters of such stars: a nearby ionizing source that ionizes a late forming halo, delaying its collapse until the halo is sufficiently large enough that the core can self-shield and suffer runaway collapse. We use simulations with a simple but accurate model for the radiative ionizing flux and confirm the basic predictions of previous work: higher ionizing fluxes can delay the collapse to lower redshifts and higher masses, up to an order of magnitude above the atomic cooling limit. In a limited number of runs we also examine the fragmentation of the cores at even higher resolution, using both simple estimates and sink particles to show that the number of fragments is generally small, at most a handful, and that the mass accretion rate on the fragments is of order 10^-3 M _⊙ yr^-1. This rate is sufficiently high enough that the descent on the main sequence (and hence the suppression of accretion) is delayed until the stellar masses are of order 100-1000 M _⊙, but not high enough to produce direct collapse black holes of mass ∼10⁵ M _⊙. The resulting clusters are larger than those produced in minihalos, but are still likely to fall short of being easily detectable in James Webb Space Telescope blind fields.