The Pollution of Pristine Material in Compressible Turbulence

Authors :: John Scalo
Evan Scannapieco
Liubin Pan
Publication Year :: 2011
Publisher :: arXiv, 2011.
Abstract: The first generation of stars had very different properties than later stellar generations, as they formed from a "pristine" gas that was free of heavy elements. Normal star formation took place only after the first stars polluted the surrounding turbulent interstellar gas, increasing its local heavy element concentration, Z, beyond a critical value, Z_c (10^-8 < Z_c<br />30 pages, 8 figure. Accepted by Journal of Fluid Mechanics