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

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impose an upper mass limit to Pop III stars. Similarly, the analytical study<br />

<strong>by</strong> McKee and Tan (2008) found th<strong>at</strong> Pop III stars can grow to gre<strong>at</strong>er than<br />

100 M⊙ even as a protostar’s own radi<strong>at</strong>ion ionizes its surroundings. Although<br />

the ioniz<strong>at</strong>ion front will expand along the polar regions perpendicular to the<br />

disk, mass from the disk itself can continue to accrete onto the star until this is<br />

halted through photoevapor<strong>at</strong>ion. Recent studies <strong>of</strong> present-day star form<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

also support the picture th<strong>at</strong> stars can reach very high masses through disk<br />

accretion. For instance, numerical studies <strong>by</strong> Krumholz et al. (2009) and<br />

Kuiper et al. (<strong>2011</strong>) both find th<strong>at</strong> strong feedback from radi<strong>at</strong>ion pressure will<br />

not halt mass flow through the stellar disk before the star has reached > ∼ 10<br />

M⊙. <strong>The</strong> final stellar masses are likely even gre<strong>at</strong>er, though the simul<strong>at</strong>ions<br />

were not followed for sufficiently long to determine this. <strong>The</strong>re is also growing<br />

observ<strong>at</strong>ional evidence th<strong>at</strong> massive star-forming regions exhibit disk structure<br />

and rot<strong>at</strong>ional motion (e.g. Cesaroni et al. 2007; Beuther et al. 2009).<br />

Meanwhile, the picture <strong>of</strong> a single massive Pop III star forming in a<br />

minihalo has been complic<strong>at</strong>ed <strong>by</strong> more recent work. Simul<strong>at</strong>ions <strong>by</strong> Clark et<br />

al. (2008, <strong>2011</strong>a) employing idealized initial conditions found th<strong>at</strong> primordial<br />

star-forming gas can undergo fragment<strong>at</strong>ion to form Pop III multiple systems,<br />

while the simul<strong>at</strong>ions <strong>of</strong> Turk et al. (2009) and <strong>Stacy</strong> et al. (2010) established<br />

such fragment<strong>at</strong>ion also when initialized on cosmological scales. Further work<br />

revealed th<strong>at</strong> gas fragment<strong>at</strong>ion can occur even on very small scales (∼ 10 AU)<br />

and in the majority <strong>of</strong> minihalos, if not nearly all (Clark et al. <strong>2011</strong>b, Greif<br />

et al. <strong>2011</strong>). <strong>The</strong>se studies tent<strong>at</strong>ively imply th<strong>at</strong> the typical Pop III mass may<br />

be somewh<strong>at</strong> lower than ∼ 100 M⊙. Smith et al. (<strong>2011</strong>) recently found th<strong>at</strong>,<br />

even under feedback from protostellar accretion luminosity, such fragment<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

may be reduced but not halted. While Smith et al. (<strong>2011</strong>) included a he<strong>at</strong>ing<br />

55

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