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

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1.1 Motiv<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

Chapter 1<br />

Introduction<br />

<strong>The</strong> last century has seen gre<strong>at</strong> strides in our understanding <strong>of</strong> the<br />

history <strong>of</strong> the universe. From Edwin Hubble’s 1929 discovery th<strong>at</strong> galaxies are<br />

receding from us (Hubble 1929), to Penzias and Wilson’s initial detection <strong>of</strong> the<br />

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB; Penzias and Wilson 1965; Dicke et al.<br />

1965), much evidence has led us to believe th<strong>at</strong> the universe began ∼ 14 billion<br />

years ago in a Big Bang and has been expanding ever since. Observ<strong>at</strong>ions have<br />

also revealed th<strong>at</strong> we likely live in a Λ Cold Dark M<strong>at</strong>ter (ΛCDM) universe,<br />

where the majority <strong>of</strong> the universe’s mass is composed <strong>of</strong> invisible dark m<strong>at</strong>ter<br />

(DM) instead <strong>of</strong> the baryonic m<strong>at</strong>ter with which we are familiar. Even more<br />

recently, we have found th<strong>at</strong> m<strong>at</strong>ter itself is only a small portion <strong>of</strong> the total<br />

energy content <strong>of</strong> the universe, which is mostly comprised <strong>of</strong> a mysterious Dark<br />

Energy.<br />

<strong>The</strong> universe we observe today bears little resemblance to the universe<br />

in its initial stages - stars, planets, and galaxies did not arise until long after<br />

the Big Bang. How was the homogeneous early universe transformed into the<br />

highly complex st<strong>at</strong>e th<strong>at</strong> we observe today? One <strong>of</strong> the keys is to understand<br />

the form<strong>at</strong>ion and properties <strong>of</strong> the first stars, the so-called Popul<strong>at</strong>ion III (or<br />

Pop III), since they likely played a crucial role in driving early cosmic evolution<br />

(e.g. Barkana and Loeb 2001; Bromm and Larson 2004; Ciardi and Ferrara<br />

1

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