Zero Metallicity with Zero CPU Hours: Masses of the First Stars on the Laptop

Understand

We develop an analytic model for the mass of the first stars forming in the center of primordial gas clouds as a function of host halo mass, redshift, and degree of rotation.

• The model is based on the estimation of key timescales determining the following three processes: the collapse of the gas cloud, the accretion onto the protostellar core, and the radiative feedback of the protostellar core.
• The final stellar mass is determined by the total mass accreted until the radiative feedback halts the accretion.
• The analytic estimation, motivated by the result of the full numerical simulations, leads to algebraic expressions allowing an extremely fast execution.