Star formation in low-metallicity environments

Physics

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Scientific paper

The thermal and chemical evolution of star-forming clouds is studied for different metallicities. Based on the derived temperature evolution, we discuss cloud/core fragmentation as a function of metallicity. We find that: For Z=0, fragmentation occurs around 10^4cm^-3, induced by H2 cooling and all fragments are very massive, > 103M_sun, consistently with previous studies; for Z>10^ {-6} Z_sun a few clumps go through an additional high density (> 1010 cm^ {-3}) fragmentation phase driven by dust-cooling, leading to low-mass fragments. The mass fraction in low-mass fragments is initially small because rather elongated configuration is needed initially to cause dust-induced fragmentation.With increasing metallicity, dust-induced fragmentation becomes easier and the mass fraction in low-mass objects continues to grow. As a result of the two fragmentation modes, a bimodal mass distribution emerges in 0.01 < Z /Z_sun < 0.1. For > 0.1Z_sun, the two peaks merge into a singly-peaked mass function which might be regarded as the precursor of the ordinary Salpeter-like IMF.

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