Early chemical enrichment of the universe and the role of very massive pop III stars

Abstract

In this paper the role of very massive pop III stars in the chemical enrichment of the early universe is discussed. We first compare our predictions with the abundance ratios measured in the high redshift Lyman-alpha forest to check whether they are compatible with the values predicted by assuming that the early universe was enriched by massive pop III stars. We conclude that to explain the observed C/Si ratio in the intergalactic medium, a contribution from pop II stars to carbon enrichment is necessary, already at redshift z=5. We then evaluate the number of Pair-Instability Supernovae (SN_(gamma gamma)) required to enrich the universe to the critical metallicity Z_cr, i.e. the metallicity value which causes the transition from a very massive star regime (m > 100 M_sun) to a lower mass regime, similar to the one characteristic of the present time (m < 100 M_sun). It is found that between 110 and 115 SN_(gamma gamma) are sufficient to chemically enrich a cubic megaparsec of the intergalactic medium at high redshift for a variety of initial mass functions. The number of ionizing photons provided by these SN_(gamma gamma) and also by the pop III stars ending as black holes was computed and we conclude that there are not enough photons to reionize the universe, being down by at least a factor of ~ 3. Finally, we calculate the abundance ratios generated by pop III stars and compare it with the ones observed in low metallicity Damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs). We suggest that pop III stars alone cannot be responsible for the abundance ratios in these objects and that intermediate mass pop II stars must have played an important role especially in enriching DLAs in nitrogen.