Pop III star formation

The first stars shape the subsequent evolution of the universe through the light they produce. They sit at the heart of a confluence of peculiar early universe objects like Direct Collapse Black Holes, Very/Super massive stars, Globular clusters, UV-bright galaxies and are important parts of the puzzle for understanding the formation of these objects.

In the FORGEd in FIRE collaboration we’ve been able to follow the collapse of gas across more than 10 orders of magnitude and simulate the formation of the first stars. In Meziani et al.(2026a), we showed that magnetic fields can become strong enough to be able to launch jets from pop III stars. In Pustovoit et al. (2026) and Meziani et al.(2026c), we’ve been able to get constraints on the initial mass function of pop III stars in different environments. These simulations represent the state-of-the-art in Pop III star formation due to the combination of the physics included, resolution reached and long integration times.