Population III Supernovae and the Assembly of the First Galaxies
Daniel Whalen, Bob Van Veelen, Brian W. O'Shea, Michael L. Norman

TL;DR
This study models Population III supernovae in early galaxies, revealing that their explosions could significantly enrich primordial gas and promote early low-mass star formation, challenging previous assumptions about their fizzle.
Contribution
Introduces multiscale 1D models of Population III supernovae that account for ionization effects and metal dispersal in primordial halos, providing new insights into early galaxy formation.
Findings
Supernova ejecta interact with dense shells, potentially causing fragmentation and star formation.
Explosions can enrich large gas masses, contrary to previous models suggesting they fizzle.
Early low-mass star formation in primordial halos may have been more common than previously thought.
Abstract
Current numerical studies suggest that the first galaxies formed a few stars at a time and were enriched only gradually by the first heavy elements. However, the large box sizes in these models cannot resolve primordial supernova explosions or the mixing of their metals with ambient gas, which could result in intervening, prompt generations of low-mass stars. We present multiscale 1D models of Population III supernovae in cosmological halos that evolve the blast from its earliest stages as a free expansion. We find that if the star ionizes the halo, the ejecta strongly interacts with the dense shell swept up by the H II region, potentially cooling and fragmenting it into clumps that are unstable to gravitational collapse. If the star fails to ionize the halo, the explosion propagates metals out to 20 - 40 pc and then collapses, enriching tens of thousands of solar masses of primordial…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
