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Copyright by Athena Ranice Stacy 2011 - The University of Texas at ...

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et al. (2010), we represent gravit<strong>at</strong>ionally collapsing high-density peaks using<br />

the sink particle method first introduced <strong>by</strong> B<strong>at</strong>e et al. (1995). This allows<br />

us to follow the mass flow onto the sinks for many (∼ 100) dynamical times.<br />

As a sink particle grows in mass, the angular momentum <strong>of</strong> the accreted mass<br />

is recorded, allowing us to measure the total angular momentum <strong>of</strong> the sink<br />

and estim<strong>at</strong>e the spin <strong>of</strong> the Pop III star represented <strong>by</strong> the sink. This is<br />

very similar to the method used in Jappsen and Klessen (2004) when they<br />

studied the angular momentum evolution <strong>of</strong> protostellar cores, though their<br />

calcul<strong>at</strong>ion had lower resolution and was designed to study modern-day star<br />

form<strong>at</strong>ion as seen in the ISM. We give further details concerning our numeri-<br />

cal methodology in Chapter 4.2, while in Chapter 4.3 we present our results,<br />

including estim<strong>at</strong>es <strong>of</strong> the stellar rot<strong>at</strong>ion r<strong>at</strong>e. In Chapter 4.4 we discuss the<br />

implic<strong>at</strong>ions for the evolution and de<strong>at</strong>h <strong>of</strong> Pop III stars, and in Chapter 4.5<br />

we address the possibility <strong>of</strong> sub-sink fragment<strong>at</strong>ion. We summarize our main<br />

conclusions in Chapter 4.6.<br />

4.2 Numerical Methodology<br />

4.2.1 Initial Setup<br />

Similar to the method used in <strong>Stacy</strong> et al. (2010), we carry out our study<br />

using GADGET, a three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH)<br />

code (Springel et al. 2001; Springel and Hernquist 2002). We perform the final<br />

part <strong>of</strong> the simul<strong>at</strong>ion described in <strong>Stacy</strong> et al. (2010) again, starting from<br />

approxim<strong>at</strong>ely 4000 years (∼ 100 free-fall times) before the first sink particle<br />

forms. This simul<strong>at</strong>ion was originally initialized <strong>at</strong> z = 99 in a periodic box<br />

<strong>of</strong> length 100 h −1 kpc using both SPH and DM particles. This was done in<br />

accordance with a ΛCDM cosmology with ΩΛ = 0.7, ΩM = 0.3, ΩB = 0.04, and<br />

98

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