MEGATRON: The environments of Population III stars at Cosmic Dawn and their connection to present day galaxies

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Storck, Anatole, Katz, Harley, Devriendt, Julien, Slyz, Adrianne, Cadiou, Corentin, Choustikov, Nicholas, Rey, Martin P., Saxena, Aayush, Agertz, Oscar, Kimm, Taysun
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Storck, Anatole
Katz, Harley
Devriendt, Julien
Slyz, Adrianne
Cadiou, Corentin
Choustikov, Nicholas
Rey, Martin P.
Saxena, Aayush
Agertz, Oscar
Kimm, Taysun
author_facet Storck, Anatole
Katz, Harley
Devriendt, Julien
Slyz, Adrianne
Cadiou, Corentin
Choustikov, Nicholas
Rey, Martin P.
Saxena, Aayush
Agertz, Oscar
Kimm, Taysun
contents We present results of Pop. III formation in the MEGATRON suite of simulations, which self-consistently follows radiation and non-equilibrium chemistry, and resolves gas at near-pc resolution of a Milky Way-mass halo at Cosmic Dawn. While the very first Pop. III stars form in halos with masses well below the atomic cooling limit, whose cooling is dominated by molecular hydrogen, the majority of Pop. III stars form in more massive systems above the $10^4$~K atomic cooling threshold. The shift in cooling regime of halos hosting new Pop. III stars occurs within $100$ Myr of the first Pop. III star as the Lyman-Werner (LW) background rapidly increases to $10^{-21}\,\rm erg\,s^{-1}\,cm^{-2}\,Hz^{-1}\,sr^{-1}$. We find that the global Pop. III star formation rate stabilizes to a value of $10^{-3}\,\rm M_\odot\,yr^{-1}$ at $z=20$. Among the three processes that quench Pop. III star formation in mini-halos, the LW background, gas starvation, and external chemical enrichment, the LW background is most important. A small fraction of haloes undergo multiple episodes of Pop. III star formation when the earlier forming stars all directly collapse to black holes. If the halos become massive enough, they can form up to $\sim100$ Pop. III stars in a single burst, which may be observable by JWST with moderate gravitational lensing. Pop. III stars form at a wide range of distances from UV-bright galaxies, with only $0.06\%$ of Pop. III stars forming within the virial radius of galaxies with $M_{\rm UV} < -17$. Finally, by tracking Pop. III star remnants down to $z=0$, we find that $75-80\,$% reside in the stellar halo of our simulated Milky Way analogue, while the remainder are gravitationally bound to lower-mass systems, including satellite halos.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_06853
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MEGATRON: The environments of Population III stars at Cosmic Dawn and their connection to present day galaxies
Storck, Anatole
Katz, Harley
Devriendt, Julien
Slyz, Adrianne
Cadiou, Corentin
Choustikov, Nicholas
Rey, Martin P.
Saxena, Aayush
Agertz, Oscar
Kimm, Taysun
Astrophysics of Galaxies
We present results of Pop. III formation in the MEGATRON suite of simulations, which self-consistently follows radiation and non-equilibrium chemistry, and resolves gas at near-pc resolution of a Milky Way-mass halo at Cosmic Dawn. While the very first Pop. III stars form in halos with masses well below the atomic cooling limit, whose cooling is dominated by molecular hydrogen, the majority of Pop. III stars form in more massive systems above the $10^4$~K atomic cooling threshold. The shift in cooling regime of halos hosting new Pop. III stars occurs within $100$ Myr of the first Pop. III star as the Lyman-Werner (LW) background rapidly increases to $10^{-21}\,\rm erg\,s^{-1}\,cm^{-2}\,Hz^{-1}\,sr^{-1}$. We find that the global Pop. III star formation rate stabilizes to a value of $10^{-3}\,\rm M_\odot\,yr^{-1}$ at $z=20$. Among the three processes that quench Pop. III star formation in mini-halos, the LW background, gas starvation, and external chemical enrichment, the LW background is most important. A small fraction of haloes undergo multiple episodes of Pop. III star formation when the earlier forming stars all directly collapse to black holes. If the halos become massive enough, they can form up to $\sim100$ Pop. III stars in a single burst, which may be observable by JWST with moderate gravitational lensing. Pop. III stars form at a wide range of distances from UV-bright galaxies, with only $0.06\%$ of Pop. III stars forming within the virial radius of galaxies with $M_{\rm UV} < -17$. Finally, by tracking Pop. III star remnants down to $z=0$, we find that $75-80\,$% reside in the stellar halo of our simulated Milky Way analogue, while the remainder are gravitationally bound to lower-mass systems, including satellite halos.
title MEGATRON: The environments of Population III stars at Cosmic Dawn and their connection to present day galaxies
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06853