How big can the universe's first starbursts get?

A new paper claims that the first starbursts in the universe, known as Population III (Pop III) stars, could be massive and could form hundreds of millions of years after the early universe's reionization period. The study, by Tae Bong Jeon, models how these starbursts might form and how they could be detected by the James Webb Space Telescope. The authors suggest that the formation of Pop III stars is delayed by the presence of Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation, which breaks down molecular hydrogen and prevents early collapse of gas clouds. This mechanism allows the gas to cool enough for star formation to occur later, but the process is complicated by the presence of metals from other supernovae, which move more slowly. The study also notes that detecting these starbursts requires gravitational lensing, which is not always reliable due to the rarity of the conditions needed to form them. The authors estimate that surveys like GLIMPSE could find up to nine of these late-blooming Pop III starbursts. The paper is available on arXiv and is expected to be a reference for future research on the early universe.

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