Observational Constraints on the Nature of the First Stars - Final Comments

Author(s):  
Timothy C. Beers
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (S256) ◽  
pp. 337-342
Author(s):  
Raphael Hirschi ◽  
Sylvia Ekström ◽  
Cyril Georgy ◽  
Georges Meynet ◽  
André Maeder

AbstractThe Magellanic Clouds are great laboratories to study the evolution of stars at two metallicities lower than solar. They provide excellent testbeds for stellar evolution theory and in particular for the impact of metallicity on stellar evolution. It is important to test stellar evolution models at metallicities lower than solar in order to use the models to predict the evolution and properties of the first stars. In these proceedings, after recalling the effects of metallicity, we present stellar evolution models including the effects of rotation at the Magellanic Clouds metallicities. We then compare the models to various observations (ratios of sub-groups of massive stars and supernovae, nitrogen surface enrichment and gamma-ray bursts) and show that the models including the effects of rotation reproduce most of the observational constraints.


Author(s):  
Abraham Loeb ◽  
Steven R. Furlanetto

This book provides a comprehensive, self-contained introduction to one of the most exciting frontiers in astrophysics today: the quest to understand how the oldest and most distant galaxies in our universe first formed. Until now, most research on this question has been theoretical, but the next few years will bring about a new generation of large telescopes that promise to supply a flood of data about the infant universe during its first billion years after the big bang. This book bridges the gap between theory and observation. It is an invaluable reference for students and researchers on early galaxies. The book starts from basic physical principles before moving on to more advanced material. Topics include the gravitational growth of structure, the intergalactic medium, the formation and evolution of the first stars and black holes, feedback and galaxy evolution, reionization, 21-cm cosmology, and more.


1999 ◽  
Vol 516 (2) ◽  
pp. 939-945 ◽  
Author(s):  
Th. Straus ◽  
G. Severino ◽  
F.‐L. Deubner ◽  
B. Fleck ◽  
S. M. Jefferies ◽  
...  

1998 ◽  
Vol 495 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyu‐Hyun Chae ◽  
David A. Turnshek ◽  
Valery K. Khersonsky

1992 ◽  
Vol 128 ◽  
pp. 56-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Arons

AbstractI survey recent theoretical work on the structure of the magnetospheres of rotation-powered pulsars, within the observational constraints set by their observed spindown, their ability to power synchrotron nebulae and their ability to produce beamed collective radio emission, while putting only a small fraction of their energy into incoherent X- and gamma radiation. I find no single theory has yet given a consistent description of the magnetosphere, but I conclude that models based on a dense outflow of pairs from the polar caps, permeated by a lower density flow of heavy ions, are the most promising avenue for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 502 (2) ◽  
pp. 2807-2814
Author(s):  
Martin G H Krause ◽  
Martin J Hardcastle

ABSTRACT The ARCADE 2 balloon bolometer along with a number of other instruments have detected what appears to be a radio synchrotron background at frequencies below about 3 GHz. Neither extragalactic radio sources nor diffuse Galactic emission can currently account for this finding. We use the locally measured cosmic ray electron population, demodulated for effects of the Solar wind, and other observational constraints combined with a turbulent magnetic field model to predict the radio synchrotron emission for the Local Bubble. We find that the spectral index of the modelled radio emission is roughly consistent with the radio background. Our model can approximately reproduce the observed antenna temperatures for a mean magnetic field strength B between 3 and 5 nT. We argue that this would not violate observational constraints from pulsar measurements. However, the curvature in the predicted spectrum would mean that other, so far unknown sources would have to contribute below 100 MHz. Also, the magnetic energy density would then dominate over thermal and cosmic ray electron energy density, likely causing an inverse magnetic cascade with large variations of the radio emission in different sky directions as well as high polarization. We argue that this disagrees with several observations and thus that the magnetic field is probably much lower, quite possibly limited by equipartition with the energy density in relativistic or thermal particles (B = 0.2−0.6 nT). In the latter case, we predict a contribution of the Local Bubble to the unexplained radio background at most at the per cent level.


Author(s):  
Alon Banet ◽  
Rennan Barkana ◽  
Anastasia Fialkov ◽  
Or Guttman

Abstract The epoch in which the first stars and galaxies formed is among the most exciting unexplored eras of the Universe. A major research effort is focused on probing this era with the 21-cm spectral line of hydrogen. While most research focuses on statistics like the 21-cm power spectrum or the sky-averaged global signal, there are other ways to analyze tomographic 21-cm maps, which may lead to novel insights. We suggest statistics based on quantiles as a method to probe non-Gaussianities of the 21-cm signal. We show that they can be used in particular to probe the variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the temperature distribution, but are more flexible and robust than these standard statistics. We test these statistics on a range of possible astrophysical models, including different galactic halo masses, star-formation efficiencies, and spectra of the X-ray heating sources, plus an exotic model with an excess early radio background. Simulating data with angular resolution and thermal noise as expected for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), we conclude that these statistics can be measured out to redshifts above 20 and offer a promising statistical method for probing early cosmic history.


Author(s):  
Timothy A. Myers ◽  
Ryan C. Scott ◽  
Mark D. Zelinka ◽  
Stephen A. Klein ◽  
Joel R. Norris ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document