Cosmology Lunchtime Seminar

Numerical models of the first primeval galaxies find that they were small, highly irregular structures built up in gravitational mergers between dark matter halos that hosted single massive primordial stars from z ~ 10 - 15. The stars were only marginally enriched by the first heavy elements because supernovae preferentially blew metals out into low density voids where star formation was not possible. Unfortunately, the large computational box sizes of these models prevented them from adequately resolving primordial SN remnants or the mixing and cooling of baryons by metals. I will present new calculations of SN explosions in the first star forming halos that resolve the flows over all relevant spatial scales. They suggest that an entire population of stars may have formed in a single remnant; if so, far more stars populated the first galaxies than now supposed, with lower masses and higher metallicities.