Sub-parsec resolution cosmological simulations of star-forming clumps at high redshift with feedback of individual stars

Abstract

We introduce a new set of zoom-in cosmological simulations with sub-pc resolution, intended to model extremely faint, highly magnified star-forming stellar clumps, detected at z = 6.14 thanks to gravitational lensing. The simulations include feedback from individual massive stars (in both the pre-supernova and supernova phases), generated via stochastic, direct sampling of the stellar initial mass function. We adopt a modified 'delayed cooling' feedback scheme, specifically created to prevent artificial radiative loss of the energy injected by individual stars in very dense gas (n ~ 10<SUP>3</SUP>-10<SUP>5</SUP> cm<SUP>-3</SUP>). The sites where star formation ignites are characterized by maximum densities of the order of 10<SUP>5</SUP> cm<SUP>-3</SUP> and gravitational pressures P<SUB>grav</SUB>/k >10<SUP>7</SUP> K cm<SUP>-</SUP><SUP>3</SUP>, corresponding to the values of the local, turbulent regions where the densest stellar aggregates form. The total stellar mass at z = 6.14 is 3.4$\times 10^7~\rm M_{\odot }$, in satisfactory agreement with the observed stellar mass of the observed systems. The most massive clumps have masses of $\sim 10^6~\rm M_{\odot }$ and half-mass sizes of ~100 pc. These sizes are larger than the observed ones, including also other samples of lensed high-redshift clumps, and imply an average density one orders of magnitude lower than the observed one. In the size-mass plane, our clumps populate a sequence that is intermediate between the ones of observed high-redshift clumps and local dSph galaxies....