CONFINED POPULATION III ENRICHMENT AND THE PROSPECTS FOR PROMPT SECOND-GENERATION STAR FORMATION

It is widely recognized that nucleosynthetic output of the first Population III supernovae was a catalyst defining the character of subsequent stellar generations. Most of the work on the earliest enrichment was carried out assuming that the first stars were extremely massive and that the associated supernovae were unusually energetic, enough to completely unbind the baryons in the host cosmic minihalo and disperse the synthesized metals into the intergalactic medium. We present a cosmological simulation following the transport of the metals synthesized in a Population III supernova assuming that it had an energy of 10 super(51) erg, compatible with standard Type II supernovae. A young supernova remnant is inserted in the first star's relic H II region in the free expansion phase and is followed for 40Myr employing adaptive mesh refinement and Lagrangian tracer particle techniques. We conclude that if Population III stars had less extreme masses, they promptly enriched the host minihalos with metals and triggered Population II star formation.