Fragmentation of star-forming clouds enriched with the first dust

Details Fragmentation of star-forming clouds enriched with the first dust Fragmentation of star-forming clouds enriched with the first dust

2006-03-28

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603766v1

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.369:1437-1444,2006

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Scientific paper

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.10391.x

The thermal and fragmentation properties of star-forming clouds have important consequences on the corresponding characteristic stellar mass. The initial composition of the gas within these clouds is a record of the nucleosynthetic products of previous stellar generations. In this paper we present a model for the evolution of star-forming clouds enriched by metals and dust from the first supernovae, resulting from the explosions of metal-free progenitors with masses in the range 12 - 30 Msun and 140 - 260 Msun. Using a self-consistent approach, we show that: (i) metals depleted onto dust grains play a fundamental role, enabling fragmentation to solar or sub-solar mass scales already at metallicities Zcr = 10^{-6} Zsun; (ii) even at metallicities as high as 10^{-2} Zsun, metals diffused in the gas-phase lead to fragment mass scales which are ~ 100 Msun; (iii) C atoms are strongly depleted onto amorphous carbon grains and CO molecules so that CII plays a minor role in gas cooling, leaving OI as the main gas-phase cooling agent in low-metallicity clouds. These conclusions hold independently of the assumed supernova progenitors and suggest that the onset of low-mass star formation is conditioned to the presence of dust in the parent clouds.

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