EAS Publications Series
- EAS Publications Series / Volume 52 / January 2011, pp 43-46
- © EAS, EDP Sciences 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2012
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/eas/1152006 (About DOI)
Research Article
Molecular Clouds at the Reionization Epoch
The 5th Zermatt ISM-Symposium Conditions and Impact of Star Formation: New Results with Herschel and Beyond, Zermatt, Switzerland.
A. Sternberga1, A. Dalgarnoa2, Y. Peia3 and E. Herbsta3
a1 Sackler School of Physics & Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Israël
a2 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge
a3 Department of Physics, Ohio State University, USA
Abstract
We show that for ionization-driven chemistry in molecular clouds with very sub-solar (but non-vanishing) metallicities, OH replaces CO as the most abundant molecule containing at least one heavy element. Old Population-II stars, with observed metallicities ≲10-3times solar, may have formed in such OH-dominated star-forming clouds, shortly after the heavy elements were first produced at the epoch of reionization in the early Universe.
(Online publication November 25 2011)
