Metal Transport and Chemical Heterogeneity in Early Star Forming Systems

Understand

To constrain the properties of the first stars with the chemical abundance patterns observed in metal-poor stars, one must identify any non-trivial effects that the hydrodynamics of metal dispersal can imprint on the abundances.

• We use realistic cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to quantify the distribution of metals resulting from one Population III supernova and from a small number of such supernovae exploding in close succession.
• Overall, supernova ejecta are highly inhomogeneously dispersed throughout the simulations.
• When the supernova bubbles collapse, quasi-virialized metal-enriched clouds, fed by fallback from the bubbles and by streaming of metal-free gas from the cosmic web, grow in the centers of the dark matter halos.