Population III Stars and Remnants in High Redshift Galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological simulations to explore the formation, evolution, and remnants of Population III stars in high-redshift galaxies, revealing their impact on early universe enrichment and black hole formation.

Contribution

It provides detailed simulation-based insights into Population III star formation, their remnants, and implications for early black hole and galaxy evolution.

Findings

Population III stars form in halos above 10^7 Msun.

Most halos do not form Population III stars until they reach ~10^7 Msun.

High-mass halos host multiple Population III remnants, including black holes.

Abstract

Recent simulations of Population III star formation have suggested that some fraction form in binary systems, in addition to having a characteristic mass of tens of solar masses. The deaths of metal-free stars result in the initial chemical enrichment of the universe and the production of the first stellar-mass black holes. Here we present a cosmological adaptive mesh refinement simulation of an overdense region that forms a few 10^9 Msun dark matter halos and over 13,000 Population III stars by redshift 15. We find that most halos do not form Population III stars until they reach Mvir ~ 10^7 Msun because this biased region is quickly enriched from both Population III and galaxies, which also produce high levels of ultraviolet radiation that suppress H2 formation. Nevertheless, Population III stars continue to form, albeit in more massive halos, at a rate of ~ 10^{-4} Msun yr^{-1} Mpc^{-3} at redshift 15. The most massive starless halo has a mass of 7 x 10^7 Msun, which could host massive black hole formation through the direct gaseous collapse scenario. We show that the multiplicity of the Population III remnants grows with halo mass above 10^8 Msun, culminating in 50 remnants located in 10^9 Msun halos on average. This has implications that high mass X-ray binaries and intermediate mass black holes that originate from metal-free stars may be abundant in high-redshift galaxies.