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The mass distribution of Population III stars

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Fraser, M 
Casey, AR 
Heger, A 
Chan, C 

Abstract

Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars are uniquely informative on the nature of massive Population III stars. Modulo a few elements that vary with stellar evolution, the present-day photospheric abundances observed in EMP stars are representative of their natal gas cloud composition. For this reason, the chemistry of EMP stars closely reflects the nucleosynthetic yields of supernovae from massive Population III stars. Here we collate detailed abundances of 53 EMP stars from the literature and infer the masses of their Population III progenitors. We fit a simple initial mass function (IMF) to a subset of 29 of the inferred Population III star masses, and find that the mass distribution is well represented by a power-law IMF with exponent α = 2.35−0.24+0.29. The inferred maximum progenitor mass for supernovae from massive Population III stars is Mmax = 87−33+13 M, and we find no evidence in our sample for a contribution from stars with masses above $\sim120M\odot$. The minimum mass is strongly consistent with the theoretical lower mass limit for Population III supernovae. We conclude that the IMF for massive Population III stars is consistent with the IMF of present-day massive stars and there may well have formed stars much below the supernova mass limit that could have survived to the present day.

Description

Keywords

stars: abundances, stars: formation, stars: Population III, supernovae: general

Journal Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0035-8711
1365-2966

Volume Title

468

Publisher

Oxford University Press
Sponsorship
European Research Council (320360)
This work was supported by the European Union FP7 programme through ERC grant number 320360. MF is supported by a Royal Society – Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship. AH was supported by Australian Research Council through a Future Fellowship (FT120100363).