Are the Formation and Abundances of Metal-Poor Stars the Result of Dust Dynamics?

Understand

Large dust grains can fluctuate dramatically in their local density, relative to gas, in neutral, turbulent disks.

• Small, high-redshift galaxies (before reionization) represent ideal environments for this process.
• We show via simple arguments and simulations that order-of-magnitude fluctuations are expected in local abundances of large grains under these conditions.
• This can have important consequences for star formation and stellar abundances in extremely metal-poor stars.