The First Stars

Understand

The first stars to form in the Universe -- the so-called Population III stars -- bring an end to the cosmological Dark Ages, and exert an important influence on the formation of subsequent generations of stars and on the assembly of the first galaxies.

• Developing an understanding of how and when the first Population III stars formed and what their properties were is an important goal of modern astrophysical research.
• In this review, I discuss our current understanding of the physical processes involved in the formation of Population III stars.
• I show how we can identify the mass scale of the first dark matter halos to host Population III star formation, and discuss how gas undergoes gravitational collapse within these halos, eventually reaching protostellar densities.