Clumpy Structures within the Turbulent Primordial Cloud

Abstract

The primordial clouds in the mini-halos hatch the first generation stars of the universe, which play a crucial role in cosmic evolution. In this paper, we investigate how turbulence impacts the structure of primordial star-forming clouds. Previous cosmological simulations of the first star formation predicted a typical mass of around 100 M⊙. This conflicts with recent observations of extremely metal-poor stars, suggesting a lower mass scale of about 25 M⊙. The discrepancy may arise from unresolved turbulence in the star-forming cloud, driven by primordial gas accretion during mini-halo formation in the previous simulations. To quantitatively examine the turbulence effect on the primordial cloud formation, we employ the adaptive mesh refinement code Enzo to model the gas cloud with primordial composition, including artificially-driven turbulence on the cloud scale and relevant gas physics. This artificially-driven turbulence utilizes a stochastic forcing model to mimic the unresolved turbulence inside mini-halos. Our results show that the turbulence with high Mach number and compressional mode effectively fragments the cloud into several clumps, each with dense cores of 22.7 − 174.9 M⊙ that undergo Jeans instability to form stars. Fragmentation caused by intense and compressive turbulence prevents a runaway collapse of the cloud. The self-bound clumps with smaller masses in the turbulent primordial clouds suggest a possible pathway to decrease the theoretical mass scale of the first stars, further reconciling the mass discrepancy between simulations and observations.