Observational constraints on the survival of pristine stars
Abstract
There is a longstanding discussion about whether low-mass stars can form from pristine gas in the early Universe. A particular point of interest is whether we can find surviving pristine stars from the first generation in our local neighbourhood. We present here a simple analytical estimate that puts tighter constraints on the existence of such stars. In the conventional picture, should these stars have formed in significant numbers and have preserved their pristine chemical composition until today, we should have found them already. With the presented method most current predictions for survivor counts larger than zero can be ruled out.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- July 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stz1210
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1903.08661
- Bibcode:
- 2019MNRAS.487..486M
- Keywords:
-
- stars: luminosity function;
- mass function;
- stars: Population III;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS