Dark Matter Annihilation and Primordial Star Formation

Understand

We investigate the effects of weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter annihilation on the formation of Population III.1 stars, which are theorized to form from the collapse of gas cores at the centers of dark matter minihalos.

• We consider the relative importance of cooling due to baryonic radiative processes and heating due to WIMP annihilation.
• We analyze the dark matter and gas profiles of several halos formed in cosmological-scale numerical simulations.
• The heating rate depends sensitively on the dark matter density profile, which we approximate with a power law rho_chi ~ r^{-alpha_chi}, in the numerically unresolved inner regions of the halo.