The Formation of Very Massive Stars in Early Galaxies and Implications for Intermediate Mass Black Holes

Understand

We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo.

• The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation.
• The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a combination of dynamical heating from mergers and a mild ($J_{\rm LW} \sim 2 - 10 \ J_{21}$(z)) Lyman-Werner (LW) background.
• We find that more than 20 very massive stars form with stellar masses greater than 1000 M$_{\odot}$.