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In cold dark matter cosmological models, the first stars to form are believed to do so within small protogalaxies. We wish to understand how the evolution of these early protogalaxies changes once the gas forming them has been enriched with small quantities of heavy elements, which are produced and dispersed into the intergalactic medium by the first supernovae. Our initial conditions represent protogalaxies forming within a fossil H II region, a previously ionized region that has not yet had time to cool and recombine. We study the influence of low levels of metal enrichment on the cooling and collapse of ionized gas in small protogalactic halos using three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations that incorporate the effects of the appropriate chemical and thermal processes. Our previous simulations demonstrated that for metallicities Z<103 Z⊙, metal line cooling alters the density and temperature evolution of the gas by less than 1% compared to the metal-free case at densities below 1 cm-3 and temperatures above 2000 K. Here, we present the results of high-resolution simulations using particle splitting to improve resolution in regions of interest. These simulations allow us to address the question of whether there is a critical metallicity above which fine structure cooling from metals allows efficient fragmentation to occur, producing an initial mass function (IMF) resembling the local Salpeter IMF, rather than only high-mass stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive star formation and black hole growth are prone to be linked in massive protogalaxies. This relation has been studied at low redshifts, pointing to active galactic nuclei growing within dust enshrouded high redshift galaxies, a prime target of the Large Millimeter Telescope. The coincidence of GLAST sources with highly-obscured high-redshift LMT/GTM galaxies can be a powerful tool for studying the formation of the first blazars. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]