Radiative and Kinetic Feedback by Low-Mass Primordial Stars

TL;DR

This study investigates how low-mass primordial stars influence early star formation through radiative and kinetic feedback, revealing that UV radiation alone does not prevent star formation and that feedback effects are relatively uniform across certain mass ranges.

Contribution

It extends previous models to include stars of 25-80 M$_{ ext{sun}}$ and supernova feedback for 25-40 M$_{ ext{sun}}$ stars, providing new insights and practical feedback fits for simulations.

Findings

Radiative feedback is consistent across 25-80 M$_{ ext{sun}}$ stars.

UV radiation alone cannot prevent star formation before global UV backgrounds develop.

Relic H II regions may reduce Lyman-Werner backgrounds, enabling star formation.

Abstract

Ionizing UV radiation and supernova flows amidst clustered minihalos at high redshift regulated the rise of the first stellar populations in the universe. Previous studies have addressed the effects of very massive primordial stars on the collapse of nearby halos into new stars, but the absence of the odd-even nucleosynthetic signature of pair-instability supernovae in ancient metal-poor stars suggests that Population III stars may have been less than 100 M$_{\odot}$. We extend our earlier survey of local UV feedback on star formation to 25 - 80 M$_{\odot}$ stars and include kinetic feedback by supernovae for 25 - 40 M$_{\odot}$ stars. We find radiative feedback to be relatively uniform over this mass range, primarily because the larger fluxes of more massive stars are offset by their shorter lifetimes. Our models demonstrate that prior to the rise of global UV backgrounds, Lyman-Werner photons from nearby stars cannot prevent halos from forming new stars. These calculations also reveal that violent dynamical instabilities can erupt in the UV radiation front enveloping a primordial halo but that they ultimately have no effect on the formation of a star. Finally, our simulations suggest that relic H II regions surrounding partially evaporated halos may expel Lyman-Werner backgrounds at lower redshifts, allowing stars to form that were previously suppressed. We provide fits to radiative and kinetic feedback on star formation for use in both semianalytic models and numerical simulations.