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H2 Cooling of Primordial Gas Triggered by UV Irradiation

Zoltan Haiman, Martin Rees, Abraham Loeb

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9511126

Abstract

We investigate the formation of molecular hydrogen (H2) in a primordial H+He gas cloud irradiated by a power-law UV flux. We find that at high densities (>1 cm-3) and low temperatures (<104 K), the background radiation enhances the formation of H2 and results in molecular cooling dominating over photoionization heating. This process could accelerate the collapse and fragmentation of dense objects at high redshifts.

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