The Formation and Fragmentation of Primordial Molecular Clouds

摘要: Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc., are thought to be intimately related nature and evolution pregalactic structure. In particular, efficiency primordial star formation initial mass function special interest. We present results from high-resolution three-dimensional adaptive mesh refinement simulations that follow collapse molecular clouds their subsequent fragmentation within a cosmologically representative volume. Comoving scales 128 kpc down 1 pc followed accurately. Dark matter dynamics, hydrodynamics, all relevant radiative processes (cooling) self-consistently for cluster-normalized cold dark (CDM) structure model. Primordial with ~105 solar masses assembled by mergers multiple objects have formed hydrogen molecules gas phase fractional abundance 10-4. As subclumps merge, cooling lowers temperature ~200 K "cold pocket" at center halo. Within this pocket, quasi-hydrostatically contracting core M☉ number densities 105 cm-3 found. find less than 1% such small-scale structures cools collapses sufficiently high available formation. Furthermore, it is worthwhile note study achieved highest dynamic range covered structured techniques cosmological hydrodynamics date.