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First Stars III
Contact:
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Poster
Title: First Light in the Primordial Gas Author(s): Jan-Pieter Paardekooper Abstract: Details of the formation of the first stars in the Universe are still a mystery. Although the initial collapse of the mini halo is relatively well understood, the evolution of the collapsing gas cloud as it becomes optically thick is not clear. In the absence of coolants, the resulting stars are not likely to be the nice little balls we see today. Rather, the situation is more likely to be a 'reactive turbulence', where temporary condensations are 'trying' to become stars, only to be blown apart again by radiation as soon as nuclear fusion starts in their denser parts. To investigate these first sources of light, 3D radiation hydrodynamics simulations are needed, including multiple sources and diffuse photons. Where current radiative transfer methods are limited to simulating at most one source, ignoring diffuse photons, the SimpleX method, developed by Ritzerveld et al. (2003, 2006), can handle multiple sources and diffuse photons without extra computational costs. Coupling SimpleX to the 3D parallel hydrodynamics code Flash (Fryxell et al. 2000) will give us a unique opportunity to study the first sources of light and their influence on the surrounding gas in great detail.
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