The First Stars | ScienceGate

This book provides a comprehensive, self-contained introduction to one of the most exciting frontiers in astrophysics today: the quest to understand how the oldest and most distant galaxies in our universe first formed. Until now, most research on this question has been theoretical, but the next few years will bring about a new generation of large telescopes that promise to supply a flood of data about the infant universe during its first billion years after the big bang. This book bridges the gap between theory and observation. It is an invaluable reference for students and researchers on early galaxies. The book starts from basic physical principles before moving on to more advanced material. Topics include the gravitational growth of structure, the intergalactic medium, the formation and evolution of the first stars and black holes, feedback and galaxy evolution, reionization, 21-cm cosmology, and more.

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Quantiles as Robust Probes of Non-Gaussianity in 21-cm Images

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ◽

10.1093/mnras/stab318 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alon Banet ◽

Rennan Barkana ◽

Anastasia Fialkov ◽

Or Guttman

Keyword(s):

Galactic Halo ◽

Angular Resolution ◽

Research Effort ◽

First Stars ◽

X Ray ◽

Global Signal ◽

Radio Background ◽

Halo Masses ◽

The Universe ◽

Cosmic History

Abstract The epoch in which the first stars and galaxies formed is among the most exciting unexplored eras of the Universe. A major research effort is focused on probing this era with the 21-cm spectral line of hydrogen. While most research focuses on statistics like the 21-cm power spectrum or the sky-averaged global signal, there are other ways to analyze tomographic 21-cm maps, which may lead to novel insights. We suggest statistics based on quantiles as a method to probe non-Gaussianities of the 21-cm signal. We show that they can be used in particular to probe the variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the temperature distribution, but are more flexible and robust than these standard statistics. We test these statistics on a range of possible astrophysical models, including different galactic halo masses, star-formation efficiencies, and spectra of the X-ray heating sources, plus an exotic model with an excess early radio background. Simulating data with angular resolution and thermal noise as expected for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), we conclude that these statistics can be measured out to redshifts above 20 and offer a promising statistical method for probing early cosmic history.

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Dark stars: a new study of the first stars in the Universe

New Journal of Physics ◽

10.1088/1367-2630/11/10/105014 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 11 (10) ◽

pp. 105014 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Katherine Freese ◽

Peter Bodenheimer ◽

Paolo Gondolo ◽

Douglas Spolyar

Keyword(s):

First Stars ◽

The Universe

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Core Collapse Supernova Models and Nucleosynthesis

Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union ◽

10.1017/s1743921313009198 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 9 (S296) ◽

pp. 27-36

Author(s):

Ken'ichi Nomoto

Keyword(s):

Big Bang ◽

Elemental Abundance ◽

Core Collapse ◽

Solar Abundance ◽

First Stars ◽

Abundance Pattern ◽

Core Collapse Supernova ◽

Abundance Patterns ◽

Supernova Explosions ◽

The Big Bang

AbstractAfter the Big Bang, production of heavy elements in the early Universe takes place in the first stars and their supernova explosions. The nature of the first supernovae, however, has not been well understood. The signature of nucleosynthesis yields of the first supernovae can be seen in the elemental abundance patterns observed in extremely metal-poor stars. Interestingly, those abundance patterns show some peculiarities relative to the solar abundance pattern, which should provide important clues to understanding the nature of early generations of supernovae. We review the recent results of the nucleosynthesis yields of massive stars. We examine how those yields are affected by some hydrodynamical effects during the supernova explosions, namely, explosion energies from those of hypernovae to faint supernovae, mixing and fallback of processed materials, asphericity, etc. Those parameters in the supernova nucleosynthesis models are constrained from observational data of supernovae and metal-poor stars.

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