Turbulence in Primordial Dark Matter Halos and Its Impact on the First Star Formation

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Ho, Meng-Yuan, Chen, Ke-Jung, Tung, Pei-Cheng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866916051392921600
author Ho, Meng-Yuan
Chen, Ke-Jung
Tung, Pei-Cheng
author_facet Ho, Meng-Yuan
Chen, Ke-Jung
Tung, Pei-Cheng
contents We present high-resolution simulations of the first star-forming clouds in 15 minihalos with masses ranging from $\sim 10^5$ to $10^7\ \text{M}_{\odot}$ at redshifts $z \sim 17-20$, using the GIZMO code. Our simulations incorporate detailed primordial gas physics and adopt initial conditions from the state-of-the-art TNG cosmological simulations. To achieve the required resolution, we apply a particle-splitting technique that increases the resolution of the original TNG data by a factor of $\sim 10^5$, reaching gas and dark matter particle masses of $0.2\ \text{M}_{\odot}$ and $80\ \text{M}_{\odot}$, respectively. This enables us to resolve gas accretion during the early assembly of minihalos and to capture the emergence of strong turbulent flows. We find that turbulence, driven by gas infall into the dark matter potential wells, is predominantly supersonic, with characteristic Mach numbers ranging from $1.8$ to $4.2$, increasing with halo mass. The supersonic turbulence effectively fragments the central gas cloud into multiple clumps. Some of dense clump masses range from $2.6~\text{M}_{\odot}$ to $66.5~\text{M}_{\odot}$ exceeding their corresponding Jeans masses and soon collapsing to form the first stars. Our results suggest that supersonic turbulence is a common feature in minihalos and plays a key role in generating clumpy star-forming clouds, with important implications for the initial mass function of the first stars.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_23768
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Turbulence in Primordial Dark Matter Halos and Its Impact on the First Star Formation
Ho, Meng-Yuan
Chen, Ke-Jung
Tung, Pei-Cheng
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
We present high-resolution simulations of the first star-forming clouds in 15 minihalos with masses ranging from $\sim 10^5$ to $10^7\ \text{M}_{\odot}$ at redshifts $z \sim 17-20$, using the GIZMO code. Our simulations incorporate detailed primordial gas physics and adopt initial conditions from the state-of-the-art TNG cosmological simulations. To achieve the required resolution, we apply a particle-splitting technique that increases the resolution of the original TNG data by a factor of $\sim 10^5$, reaching gas and dark matter particle masses of $0.2\ \text{M}_{\odot}$ and $80\ \text{M}_{\odot}$, respectively. This enables us to resolve gas accretion during the early assembly of minihalos and to capture the emergence of strong turbulent flows. We find that turbulence, driven by gas infall into the dark matter potential wells, is predominantly supersonic, with characteristic Mach numbers ranging from $1.8$ to $4.2$, increasing with halo mass. The supersonic turbulence effectively fragments the central gas cloud into multiple clumps. Some of dense clump masses range from $2.6~\text{M}_{\odot}$ to $66.5~\text{M}_{\odot}$ exceeding their corresponding Jeans masses and soon collapsing to form the first stars. Our results suggest that supersonic turbulence is a common feature in minihalos and plays a key role in generating clumpy star-forming clouds, with important implications for the initial mass function of the first stars.
title Turbulence in Primordial Dark Matter Halos and Its Impact on the First Star Formation
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23768