The Formation of the First Star in the Universe

We describe results from a fully self-consistent three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation of the formation of one of the first stars in the Universe. In current models of structure formation, dark matter initially dominates, and pregalactic objects form because of gravitational instability from small initial density perturbations. As they assemble via hierarchical merging, primordial gas cools through ro-vibrational lines of hydrogen molecules and sinks to the center of the dark matter potential well. The high-redshift analog of a molecular cloud is formed. As the dense, central parts of the cold gas cloud become self-gravitating, a dense core of approximately 100 M (where M is the mass of the Sun)…