Star Formation in the First Galaxies - II: Clustered Star Formation and the Influence of Metal Line Cooling

Understand

Population III stars are believed to have been more massive than typical stars today and to have formed in relative isolation.

• The thermodynamic impact of metals is expected to induce a transition leading to clustered, low-mass Population II star formation.
• In this work, we present results from three cosmological simulations, only differing in gas metallicity, that focus on the impact of metal fine-structure line cooling on the formation of stellar clusters in a high-redshift atomic cooling halo.
• Introduction of sink particles allows us to follow the process of gas hydrodynamics and accretion onto cluster stars for 4 Myr corresponding to multiple local free-fall times.