Star Formation for Predictive Primordial Galaxy Formation

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of early star formation after the Big Bang, highlighting challenges, recent computational advances, and the influence of initial stars on subsequent cosmic evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in primordial star formation, emphasizing recent computational developments and unresolved problems.

Findings

Chemical enrichment increased complexity in star-forming systems.

Ab-initio simulations are beginning to make predictive contact with observations.

Early stars significantly influenced subsequent galaxy formation.

Abstract

The elegance of inflationary cosmology and cosmological perturbation theory ends with the formation of the first stars and galaxies, the initial sources of light that launched the phenomenologically rich process of cosmic reionization. Here we review the current understanding of early star formation, emphasizing unsolved problems and technical challenges. We begin with the first generation of stars to form after the Big Bang and trace how they influenced subsequent star formation. The onset of chemical enrichment coincided with a sharp increase in the overall physical complexity of star forming systems. Ab-initio computational treatments are just now entering the domain of the predictive and are establishing contact with local observations of the relics of this ancient epoch.