Joint Astrophysical Colloquium
First stars and their chemical fingerprints
Stefania Salvadori (Università di Firenze)
Thursday 24/11/2022 @ 11:30, Sala IV piano Battiferro + Remote
The first stars profoundly affected the unfolding of our Universe. Their mass distribution is unknown, but it controls the injection of energy and newly created heavy elements into the gas, affecting subsequent star-formation along with the build-up of the first galaxies. A direct exploration of the first star formation episodes is a tremendous challenge. But in the Local Group, ancient stars can be individually resolved, providing us with the unique opportunity to identify metal-poor stars formed in environments directly polluted by the first stars. In this seminar, I will discuss the most recent observational and theoretical findings of our group. Firstly, I will demonstrate that several first star descendants, holding the chemical fingerprints of the first stars have been already identified. Secondly, I will discuss novel theoretical-driven methods to find the rare descendants of very massive first stars and propose new ideas to constrain the mass distribution of the first stars and the energy distribution of the first supernovae. Finally, I will present new evidence of the first stars.