2006/11/13 by Liubin Pan, John Scalo · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Mixing (physics) #Physics #Quantum mechanics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/510779
published as Astrophys.J.654:L29-L32,2006 · 5 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2006/11/13 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Motivated by an interpretation of z \∼ 3 objects by Jimenez and Haiman (2006), we examine processes that control the fraction of primordial (Z = 0) gas, and so primordial stars, in high-SFR Lyman break galaxies. A primordial fraction different from 1 or 0 requires microscopic diffusion catalyzed by a velocity field with timescale comparable to the duration of star formation. The only process we found that satisfies this requirement for LBGs without fine-tuning is turbulence-enhanced mixing induced by exponential stretching and compressing of metal-rich ejecta. The time-dependence of the primordial fraction for this model is calculated. We show that conclusions for all the models discussed here are virtually independent of the IMF, including extremely top-heavy IMFs.