Discrimination of heavy elements originating from Pop III stars in z = 3 intergalactic medium

TL;DR

This paper uses cosmological simulations to study how metals from Pop III stars are distributed in the intergalactic medium at redshift 3, highlighting their significant contribution in low-density regions.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based analysis of Pop III star metal distribution at z~3, comparing it with galaxy contributions and predicting observational signatures.

Findings

Pop III stars significantly contribute to metals in low-density regions.

Median metallicity in the IGM is around 10^{-4.5} to 10^{-2} Z_sun.

Pop III metals often dominate over galaxy metals in certain regions.

Abstract

We investigate the distribution of metals in the cosmological volume at $z\sim3$, in particular, provided by massive population III (Pop III) stars using a cosmological $N$-body simulation in which a model of Pop III star formation is implemented. Owing to the simulation, we can choose minihaloes where Pop III star formation occurs at $z>10$ and obtain the spatial distribution of the metals at lower-redshifts. To evaluate the amount of heavy elements provided by Pop III stars, we consider metal yield of pair-instability or core-collapse supernovae (SNe) explosions of massive stars. By comparing our results to the Illustris-1 simulation, we find that heavy elements provided by Pop III stars often dominate those from galaxies in low density regions. The median value of the volume averaged metallicity is $Z\sim 10^{-4.5 - -2} Z_{\odot}$ at the regions. Spectroscopic observations with the next generation telescopes are expected to detect the metals imprinted on quasar spectra.