# ‘FIRST LIGHT’ IN THE UNIVERSE; WHAT ENDED THE “DARK AGE”?

## 1 INTRODUCTION

One of the outstanding achievements of cosmology is that the state of the universe when it was only a few seconds old seems to be well understood. The details have firmed up, and we can make confident predictions about primordial neutrinos, and He and D nucleosynthesis. This progress, spanning the last 30 years, owed a lot, on the theoretical side, to David Schramm and his Chicago colleagues. The way the universe cools, and eventually recombines, and the evolution of the (linear) perturbations that imprint angular structures on the microwave background, is also well understood. But this gratifying simplicity ends when primordial imhomogeneities and density contrasts evolve into the non-linear regime.

The Universe literally entered a dark age about 300,000 years after the big bang, when the primordial radiation cooled below 3000K and shifted into the infrared. Unless there were some photon input from (for instance) decaying particles, or string loops, darkness would have persisted until the first non-linearities developed into gravitationally-bound systems, whose internal evolution gave rise to stars, or perhaps to more massive bright objects.

Spectroscopy from the new generation of 8-10 metre telescopes now complements the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST); these instruments are together elucidating the history of star formation, galaxies and clustering back, at least, to redshifts $`z=5`$. Our knowledge of these eras is no longer restricted to ‘pathological’ objects such as extreme AGNs – this is one of the outstanding astronomical advances of recent years. In addition, quasar spectra (the Lyman forest, etc) are now observable with much improved resolution and signal-to-noise; they offer probes of the clumping, temperature, and composition of diffuse gas on galactic (and smaller) scales over an equally large redshift range, rather as ice cores enable geophysicists to probe climatic history.

Detailed sky maps of the microwave background (CMB) temperature (and perhaps its polarization as well) will soon offer direct diagnostics of the initial fluctuations from which the present-day large-scale structure developed. Most of the photons in this background have travelled uninterruptedly since the recombination epoch at $`z=1000`$, when the fluctuations were still in the linear regime. We may also, in the next few years, discover the nature of the dark matter; computer simulations of structure formation will not only include gravity, but will incorporate the gas dynamics and radiation of the baryonic component in a sophisticated way.

But these advances may still leave us, several years from now, uncertain about the quantitative details of the whole era from $`10^6`$ to $`10^9`$ years – the formation of the first stars, the first supernovae, the first heavy elements; and how and when the intergalactic medium was reionized. Even by the time Planck/Surveyor and the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) have been launched, we may still be unable to compute crucial things like the star formation efficiency, feedback from supernovae. etc – processes that ‘semi-analytic’ models for galactic evolution now parametrise in a rather ad hoc way.

And CMB fluctuations will still be undiscernable on the very small angular scales that correspond to subgalactic structures, which, in any hierarchical (‘bottom up’) scenario would be the first non-linearities to develop. So the ‘dark age’ is likely to remain a topic for lively controversy at least for the next decade.

## 2 COSMOGONIC PRELIMINARIES: <br>MOLECULAR HYDROGEN AND UV <br>FEEDBACK

### 2.1 The H<sub>2</sub> cooling regime

Detailed studies of structure formation generally focus on some variant of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony – with a specific choice for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{CDM}}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Even if such a model turns out to be oversimplified, it offers a useful ’template’ whose main features apply generically to any ‘bottom up’ model for structure formation. There is no minimum scale for gravitational aggregation of the CDM. However, the baryonic gas does not ‘feel’ the very smallest clumps, which have very small binding energies: pressure opposes condensation of the gas on scales below a (time dependent) Jeans scale – roughly, the size of a comoving sphere whose boundary expands at the sound speed.

The overdense clumps of CDM within which ‘first light’ occurs must provide a deep enough potential well to pull the gas into them . But they must also – a somewhat more stringent requirement – yield, after virialisation, a gas temperature such that radiative cooling is efficient enough to allow the gas to contract further. The dominant coolant for gas of primordial composition is molecular hydrogen. This has been considered by many authors, from the 1960s onwards; see recent discussions by, for instance, Tegmark et al. (1997), Haiman, Rees and Loeb (1997), Haiman, Abel and Rees (1999). In a uniformly expanding universe, only about $`10^6`$ of the post-recombination hydrogen is in the form of H<sub>2</sub>. However this rises to $`10^4`$ within collapsing regions – high enough to permit cooling at temperatures above a few hundred degrees.

So the first ‘action’ would have occurred within clumps with virial temperatures of a few hundred degrees (corresponding to a virial velocity of 2-3 km/s). Their total mass is of order $`10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ ; the baryonic mass is smaller by a factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b/\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{CDM}}`$.

The gas falling into such a clump exhibits filamentary substructure: the contraction is almost isothermal, so the Jeans mass decreases as the density rises. Abel, Bryan and Norman (1999) have simulated the collapse, taking account of radiative transfer in the molecular lines, up to $`10^{12}`$ times the turnaround density; by that stage the Jeans mass (and the size of the smallest bound subclumps) has dropped to $`50100\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

There is still a large gap to be bridged between the endpoint of these impressive simulations and the formation of ‘protostars’. Fragmentation could continue down to smaller masses; on the other hand, there could be no further fragmentation – indeed, as Bromm, Coppi and Larson (1999) argue, infall onto the largest blobs could lead to masses much higher than $`100\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

And when even one star has formed, further uncertainties ensue. Radiation or winds may expel uncondensed material from the shallow potential wells, and exert the kind of feedback familiar from studies of giant molecular clouds in our own Galaxy. In addition to this local feedback, there is a non-local effect due to UV radiation. Photons of $`h\nu >11.18`$ eV can photodissociate H<sub>2</sub>, as first calculated by Stecher and Williams (1967). These photons, softer than the Lyman limit, can penetrate a high column density of HI and destroy molecules in virialised and collapsing clouds. H<sub>2</sub> cooling would be quenched if there were a UV background able to dissociate the molecules as fast as they form. The effects within clouds have been calculated by Haiman, Abel and Rees (1999) and Ciardi, Ferrara and Abel (1999).

(If the radiation from the first objects had a non-thermal component extending up to KeV energies, as it might if a contribution came from accreting compact objects or supernovae, then there is a counterbalancing positive feedback. X-ray photons penetrate HI, producing photoelectrons (which themselves cause further collisional ionizationwhile being slowed down and thermalised); these electrons then catalyse further H<sub>2</sub> formation via H<sup>-</sup>).

It seems most likely that the negative feedback due to photoionization is dominant. When the UV background gets above a certain threshold, H<sub>2</sub> is prevented from forming and molecular cooling is suppressed. Under all plausible assumptions about UV spectral shape, etc, this threshold is reached well before there has been enough UV production to ionize most of the medium. Therefore, only a small fraction of the UV that ionized the IGM can have been produced in systems where star formation was triggered by molecular cooling.

### 2.2 The atomic-cooling stage

An atomic H-He mixture behaves adiabatically unless T is as high as 8-10 thousand degrees, when excitation of Lyman alpha by the Maxwellian tail of the electrons provides efficient cooling whose rate rises steeply with temperature.

When H<sub>2</sub> cooling has been quenched, primordial gas cannot therefore cool and fragment within bound systems unless their virial temperature reaches $`10^4\mathrm{K}`$. The corresponding mass is $`10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Most of the UV that ionized the IGM therefore came from stars (or perhaps from accreting black holes) that formed within systems of total mass $`\mathrm{}>10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

## 3 THE EPOCH OF IONIZATION <br>BREAKTHROUGH

### 3.1 UV production in ‘subgalaxies’

The IGM would have remained predominantly neutral until ‘subgalaxies’, with total (dark matter) masses above $`10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and virial velocities 20 km/s, had generated enough photoionizing flux from O-B stars, or perhaps accreting black holes (see Loeb (1999) and references cited therein).

How many of these ‘subgalaxies’ formed, and how bright each one would be, depends on another big uncertainty: the IMF and formation efficiency for the Population III objects.

The gravitational aspects of clustering can all be modeled convincingly by computer simulations. So also, now, can the dynamics of the baryonic (gaseous) component – including shocks and radiative cooling. The huge dynamic range of the star-formation process cannot be tracked computationally up to the densities at which individual stars condense out. But the nature of the simulation changes as soon as the first stars (or other compact objects) form. The first stars (or other compact objects) exert crucial feedback – the remaining gas is heated by ionizing radiation, and perhaps also by an injection of kinetic energy via winds and even supernova explosions – which is even harder to model, being sensitive to the IMF, and to further uncertain physics.

Three major uncertainties are:

(i) What is the IMF of the first stellar population? The high-mass stars are the ones that provide efficient (and relatively prompt) feedback. It plainly makes a big difference whether these are the dominant type of stars, or whether the initial IMF rises steeply towards low masses (or is bimodal), so that very many faint stars form before there is a significant feedback. The Population III objects form in an unmagnetised medium of pure H and He, bathed in background radiation that may be hotter than 50 K when the action starts (at redshift $`z`$ the ambient temperature is of course $`2.7(1+z)`$ K). Would these conditions favour a flatter or a steeper IMF than we observed today? This is completely unclear: the density may become so high that fragmentation proceeds to very low masses (despite the higher temperature and absence of coolants other than molecular hydrogen); on the other hand, massive stars may be more favoured than at the present epoch. Indeed, fragmentation could even be so completely inhibited that the first things to form are supermassive holes.

(ii) Quite apart from the uncertainty in the IMF, it is also unclear what fraction of the baryons that fall into a clump would actually be incorporated into stars before being re-ejected. The retained fraction would almost certainly be an increasing function of virial velocity: gas more readily escapes from shallow potential wells.

(iii) The influence of the Population III objects depends on how much of their radiation escapes into the IGM. Much of the Lyman continuum emitted within a ‘subgalaxy’ could, for instance, be absorbed within it. The total number of massive stars or accreting holes needed to build up the UV background shortward of the Lyman limit and ionize the IGM, and the concomitant contamination by heavy elements, would then be greater.

All these three uncertainties would, for a given fluctuation spectrum, affect the redshift at which molecules were destroyed, and at which full ionization occurred. Perhaps I’m being pessimistic, but I doubt that either observations or theoretical progress will have eliminated these uncertainties about the ‘dark age’ even by the time NGST flies.

### 3.2 How uncertain is the ionization epoch?

Even if we knew exactly what the initial fluctuations were, and when the first bound systems on each scale formed, the above-mentioned uncertainties would render the ionization redshift is uncertain by at least a factor of 2. This can be easily seen as follows:

Ionization breakthrough requires at least 1 photon for each ionized baryon in the IGM (one photon per baryon is obviously needed; extra photons are needed to balance recombinations, which are more important in clumps and filaments than in underdense regions). An OB star produces $`10^410^5`$ ionizing photons for each constituent baryon, so (again in very round numbers) $`10^3`$ of the baryons must condense into stars with a standard IMF to supply the requisite UV. Photoionization will be discussed in Madau’s contribution to this conference. Earlier references include Ciardi and Ferrara (1997), Gnedin and Ostriker (1998), Madau, Haardt and Rees (1999) and Gnedin (1999).

We can then contrast two cases:

(A) If the star formation were efficient, in the sense that all the baryons that ‘went non-linear’, and fell into a CDM clump larger than the Jeans mass, turned into stars, then the rare 3-$`\sigma `$ peaks on mass-scales $`10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ would suffice.

On the other hand:

(B) Star formation could plausibly be so inefficient that less than 1 percent of the baryons in a pregalaxy condense into stars, the others being expelled by stellar winds, supernovae, etc., In this case, production of the necessary UV would have to await the collapse of more typical peaks (1.5-$`\sigma `$, for instance).

A 1.5-$`\sigma `$ peak has an initial amplitude only half that of a 3-$`\sigma `$ peak, and would therefore collapse at a value of $`(1+z)`$ that was lower by a factor of 2. For plausible values of the fluctuation amplitude this could change $`z_i`$ from 15 (scenario A) to 7 (scenario B). There are of course other complications, stemming from the possibility that most UV photons may be reabsorbed locally; moreover in Scenario B the formation of sufficient OB stars might have to await the build-up of larger systems, with deeper potential wells, in which stars could form more efficiently.

The above examples have assumed a ‘standard’ IMF, and there is actually further uncertainty. If the Population III IMF were biased towards low-mass stars, the situation resembles inefficient star formation in that a large fraction of the baryons (not just the rare 3-$`\sigma `$ peaks) would have to collapse non-linearly before enough UV had been generated to ionize the IGM. By the time this happened, a substantial fraction of the baryons could have condensed into low mass stars. This population could even contribute to the MACHO lensing events (see section 6).

### 3.3 Detecting ‘pregalaxies’ at very high redshift.

What is the chance of detecting the ancient ‘pregalaxies’ that ionized the IGM at some redshift $`z_i>5`$? The detectability of these early-forming systems, of subgalactic mass, depends which of the two scenarios in 3.2 (above) is nearer the truth. If B were correct, the individual high-z sources would have magnitudes of 31, and would be so common that there would be about one per square arc second all over the sky; on the other hand, option A would imply a lower surface density of brighter (and more readily detectable) sources for the first UV (Miralda-Escudé and Rees (1998), Barkana and Loeb (1999)). There are already some constraints from the Hubble Deep Field, particularly on the number of ‘miniquasars’ (Haiman, Madau and Loeb 1999). Objects down to 31st magnitude could be detected from the ground by looking at a field behind a cluster where there might be gravitational-lens magnification, but firm evidence is likely to await NGST.

Note that scenarios A and B would have interestingly different implications for the formation and dispersal of the first heavy elements. If B were correct, there would be a large number of locations whence heavy elements could spread into the surrounding medium; on the other hand, scenario A would lead to a smaller number of brighter and more widely-spaced sources.

### 3.4 The ‘breakthrough’ epoch

Quasar spectra tell us that the diffuse IGM is almost fully ionized back to $`z=5`$, but we do not know when it in effect became an HII region. The IGM would already be inhomogeneous at the time when the ionization occurred. The traditional model of expanding HII regions that overlap at a well defined epoch when ‘breakthrough’ occurs (dating back at least to Arons and McCray (1972)) is consequently rather unrealistic. By the time ionization occurs the gas is so inhomogeneous that half the mass (and far more than half of the recombinations) is within 10 percent of the volume. HII regions in the ‘voids’ can overlap (in the sense that the IGM becomes ionized except for ‘islands’ of high density) before even half the material has been ionized. Thereafter, the overdense regions would be ‘eroded away’: Stromgren surfaces encroach into them; the neutral regions shrink and present a decreasing cross-section; the mean free path of ionizing photons (and consequently the UV background intensity J) goes up (Miralda-Escudé, Haehnelt and Rees 1999, Gnedin 1999).

The thermal history of the IGM beyond $`z=5`$ is relevant to the modelling of the absorption spectra of quasars at lower redshifts. The recombination and cooling timescales are comparable to the cosmological expansion timescale. Therefore the ‘texture’ and temperature of the filamentary structure responsible for the lines in the Lyman alpha ‘forest’ yield fossil evidence of the thermal history at higher redshifts.

### 3.5 Black hole formation and AGNs at high $`𝒛`$?

The observations of high-redshift galaxies tell us that some structures (albeit perhaps only exceptional ones) must have attained galactic scales by the epoch $`z=5`$. Massive black holes (manifested as quasars) accumulate in the deep potential wells of these larger systems. Quasars may dominate the UV background at $`z<3`$: if their spectra follow a power-law, rather than the typical thermal spectrum of OB stars, then quasars are probably crucial for the second ionization of He, even if H was ionized primarily by starlight. (One interesting point that somewhat blurs this issue has recently been made by Tumlinson and Shull (1999). They note that, if the metallicity were zero, there would be no CNO cycle; high-mass stars therefore need to contract further before reaching the main sequence, and so have hotter atmospheres, emitting more photons above the He ionization edge.)

At redshifts $`z=10`$, no large galaxies may yet have assembled, but CDM-type models suggest that ‘subgalaxies’ would exist. Would these have massive holes (perhaps ‘mini-AGNs’) in their centres? This is interesting for at least two reasons: first, the answer would determine how many high-energy photons, capable of doubly-ionizing He, were produced at very high redshifts (Haiman and Loeb 1998); second, the coalescence of these holes, when their host ‘subgalaxies’ merge to form large galaxies, would be signalled by pulse-trains of low-frequency gravitational waves that could be detected by space-based detectors such as LISA (Haehnelt 1994).

The accumulation of a central black hole may require virialised systems with large masses and deep potential wells (cf Haehnelt and Rees 1993, Haehnelt and Kauffmann (1999)); if so, we would naturally expect the UV background at the highest redshifts to be contributed mainly by stars in ‘subgalaxies’. However, this is merely an expectation; it could be, contrariwise, that black holes readily form even in the first $`10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ CDM condensations (this would be an extreme version of a ‘flattened’ IMF), Were this the case, the early UV production could be dominated by black holes. This would imply that the most promising high-z sources to seek at near-IR wavelengths would be miniquasars, rather than ‘subgalaxies’. It would also, of course, weaken the connection between the ionizing background and the origin of the first heavy elements.

### 3.6 Distinguishing between objects with $`𝒛\mathbf{>}𝒛_𝒊`$ and $`𝒛\mathbf{<}𝒛_𝒊`$

The blanketing effect due to the Lyman alpha forest – known to be becoming denser towards higher redshifts, and likely therefore to be even thicker beyond $`z=5`$ – would be severe, and would block out the blue wing of Lyman alpha emission from a high-$`z`$ source. Such objects may still be best detected via their Lyman alpha emission even though the absorption cuts the equivalent width by half. But at redshifts larger than $`z_i`$ – in other words, before ionization breakthrough – the Gunn-Peterson optical depth is so large that any Lyman alpha emision line is blanketed completely, because the damping wing due to IGM absorption spills over into the red wing (Miralda-Escudé and Rees 1998). This means that any objects detectable beyond $`z`$ would be characterised by a discontinuity at the redshifted Lyman alpha frequency. The Lyman alpha line itself would not be detectable (even though this may be the most prominent feature in objects with $`z<z_i`$).

## 4 RADIO AND MICROWAVE PROBES OF THE IONIZATION EPOCH

### 4.1 CMB fluctuations as a probe of the ionization epoch

If the intergalactic medium were suddenly reionized at a redshift $`z`$, then the optical depth to electron scattering would be $`0.02h^1\left((1+z)/10\right)^{3/2}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2/0.02\right)`$ (generalisation to more realistic scenarios of gradual reionization is straightforward). Even when this optical depth is far below unity, the ionized gas constitutes a ‘fog’– a partially opaque ‘screen’ – that attenuates the fluctuations imprinted at the recombination era; the fraction of photons that are scattered at $`z_i`$ then manifest a different pattern of fluctuations, characteristically on larger angular scales. This optical depth is consequently one of the parameters that can in principle be determined from CMB anisotropy measurements (Zaldarriaga, Spergel and Seljak 1997). It is feasible to detect a value as small as 0.1 – polarization measurements may allow even greater precision, since the scattered component would imprint polarization on angular scales of a few degrees, which would be absent from the Sachs-Wolfe fluctuations on that angular scale originating at $`t_{rec}`$.

There are two effects that could introduce secondary fluctuations on small angular scales. First, the ionization may be patchy on a large enough scale for irregularities in the ‘screen’ to imprint extra angular structure on the radiation shining through from the ‘last scattering surface at the recombination epoch’. Second, the fluctuations may have large enough amplitudes for second-order effects to induce perturbations. (Hu, 1999)

### 4.2 21 cm emission, absorption and tomography

The 21 cm line of HI at redshift $`z`$ would contribute to the background spectrum at a wavelength of $`21(1+z)`$ cm. This contribution depends on the spin temperature $`T_s`$ and the CMB temperature $`T_{bb}`$. It amounts to a brightness temperature of only $`0.01h^1(\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2/0.02)((1+z)/10)^{1/2}(T_sT_{bb})/T_s\mathrm{K}`$ – very small compared with the 2.7K of the present CMB; and even smaller compared to the galactic synchrotron radiation that swamps the CMB, even at high galactic latitudes, at the long wavelengths where high-$`z`$ HI should show up.

Nonetheless, inhomogeneities in the HI may be detectable because they would give rise not only to angular fluctuations but also to spectral structure. (Madau, Meiksin and Rees 1997, Tozzi et al. 1999) If the same strip of sky were scanned at two radio frequencies differing by (say) 1 MHz, the temperature fluctuations due to the CMB itself, to galactic thermal and synchrotron backgrounds, and to discrete sources would track each other closely. Contrariwise, there would be no correlation between the 21 cm contributions, because the two frequencies would be probing ‘shells’ in redshift space whose radial separation would exceed the correlation length. It may consequently be feasible to distinguish the 21 cm background, utilizing a radio telescope with large collecting area. The fact that line radiation allows 3-dimensional tomography of the high-$`z`$ HI renders this a specially interesting technique.

For the 21 cm contribution to be observable, the spin temperature $`T_s`$ must of course differ from $`T_{bb}`$. The HI would be detected in absorption or in emission depending on whether $`T_s`$ is lower or higher than $`T_{bb}`$. During the ‘dark age’ the hyperfine levels of HI are affected by the microwave background itself, and also by collisional processes. $`T_s`$ will therefore be a weighted mean of the CMB and gas temperatures. Since the diffuse gas is then cooler than the radiation (having expanded adiabatically since it decoupled from the radiation), collisions would tend to lower $`T_s`$ below $`T_{bb}`$ , so that the 21 cm line would appear as an absorption feature, even in the CMB. At the low densities of the IGM, collisions are however ineffectual in lowering $`T_s`$ substantially below $`T_{bb}`$ (Scott and Rees 1990). When the first UV sources turn on, Lyman alpha (whose profile is itself controlled by the kinetic temperature) provides a more effective coupling between the spin temperature and the kinetic temperature. If Lyman alpha radiation penetrates the HI without heating it, it can actually lower the spin temperature so that the 21 cm line becomes a stronger absorption feature. However, whatever objects generate the Lyman alpha emission would also provide a heat input, which would soon raise $`T_s`$ above $`T_{bb}`$.

When the kinetic temperature rises above $`T_{bb}`$, the 21 cm feature appears in emission. The kinetic temperature can rise due to the weak shocking and adiabatic compression that accompanies the emergence of the first (very small scale) non-linear structure (cf section 2). When photoionization starts, there will also, around each HII domain, be a zone of predominantly neutral hydrogen that has been heated by hard UV or X-ray photons (Tozzi et al. (1999). This latter heat input would be more important if the first UV sources emitted radiation with a power-law (rather than just exponential) component.

In principle, one might be able to detect incipient large-scale structure, even when still in the linear regime, because it leads to variations in the column density of HI, per unit redshift interval, along different lines of sight (Scott and Rees (1990)).

Because the signal is so weak, there is little prospect of detecting high-$`z`$ 21 cm emission unless it displays structure on (comoving) scales of several Mpc (corresponding to angular scales of several arc minutes) According to CDM-type models, the gas is likely to have been already ionized, predominantly by numerous ionizing sources each of sub-galactic scale, before such large structures become conspicuous. On the other hand, if the primordial gas were heated by widely-spaced quasar-level sources, each of these would be surrounded by a shell that could feasibly be revealed by 21cm tomography using, for instance, the new Giant Meter Wave Telescope (GMRT) (Swarup (1994)). With luck, effects of this kind may be detectable. Otherwise, they will have to await next-generation instruments such as the Square-Kilometer Array.

## 5 VERY DISTANT SUPERNOVAE <br>(AND PERHAPS GAMMA-RAY BURSTS)

### 5.1 The supernova rate at high redshifts

If the reheating and ionization were due to OB stars, it is straightforward to calculate how many supernovae would have gone off, in each comoving volume, as a direct consequence of this output of UV, also how many supernovae would be implicated in producing the heavy elements detected in quasar absorption lines: there would be one, or maybe several, per year in each square arc minute of sky (Miralda-Escudé and Rees 1997). The precise number depends partly on the redshift and the cosmological model, but also on the uncertainties about the UV background, and about the actual high-$`z`$ abundance of heavy elements.

These high-$`z`$ supernovae would be primarily of Type 2. The typical observed light curve has a flat maximum lasting 80 days. One would therefore (taking the time dilation into account) expect each supernova to be near its maximum for nearly a year. It is possible that the explosions proceed differently when the stellar envelope is essentially metal-free, yielding different light curves, so any estimates of detectability are tentative. However, taking a standard Type 2 light curve (which may of course be pessimistic), one calculates that these objects should be approximately 27th magnitude in J and K bands even out beyond $`z=5`$. The detection of such objects would be an easy task with the NGST (Stockman 1998). With existing facilities it is marginal. The best hope would be that observations of clusters of galaxies might serendipitously reveal a magnified gravitationally-lensed image from far behind the cluster.

The first supernovae may be important for another reason: they may generate the first cosmic magnetic fields. Mass loss (via winds or supernovae permeated by magnetic flux) would disperse magnetic flux along with the heavy elements. The ubiquity of heavy elements in the Lyman alpha forest indicates that there has been widespread diffusion from the sites of these early supernovae, and the magnetic flux could have diffused in the same way. This flux, stretched and sheared by bulk motions, can be the ‘seed’ for the later amplification processes that generate the larger-scale fields pervading disc galaxies.

### 5.2 Gamma ray bursts: the most luminous known cosmic objects

Some subset of massive stars may give rise to gamma-ray bursts. It may indeed turn out that all the long-duration bursts detected by Beppo-SAX involve some supernova-type event, and that the shorter bursts (maybe less highly beamed) are caused by compact binary coalescence at more modest redshifts. Bursts have already been detected out to $`z=3.4`$; their optical afterglows are 100 times brighter than supernovae. Prompt optical emission concurrent with the 10-100 seconds of the burst itself (observed in one case so far, but expected in others) is more luminous by a further factor 100. Gamma-ray bursts are, however, far rarer than supernovae – even though the afterglow rate could exceed that of the bursts themselves if the gamma rays were more narrowly beamed than the slower-moving ejecta that cause the afterglow. Detection of ultra-luminous optical emission from bursts beyond $`z=5`$ would offer a marvellous opportunity to obtain a high-resolution spectrum of intervening absorption features. (Lamb and Reichart 1999)

## 6 WHERE ARE THE OLDEST (AND THE <br>EXTREME METAL-POOR) STARS?

The efficiency of early mixing is important for the interpretation of stars in our own galaxy that have ultra-low metallicity – lower than the mean metallicity of $`10^210^3`$ times solar that is likely to have been generated in association with the UV background at $`z>5`$. For a comprehensive review of what is known about such stars, see Beers (1999). If the heavy elements were efficiently mixed, then these stars would themselves need to have formed before galaxies were assembled. The mixing, however, is unlikely to operate on scales as large as a protogalaxy – if it did, the requisite bulk flow speeds would be so large that they would completely change the way in which galaxies assembled, and would certainly need to be incorporated in simulations of the Lyman alpha forest.

As White and Springel (1999) have recently emphasised, it is important to distinguish between the first stars and the most metal-poor stars. The former would form in high-sigma peaks that would be correlated owing to biasing, and which would preferentially lie within overdensities on galactic scales. These stars would therefore now be found within galactic bulges. However, most of the metal-poor stars could form later. They would now be in the halos, of galaxies, though they would not have such an extended distribution as the dark matter. This is because they would form in subgalaxies that would tend, during the subsequent mergers, to sink via dynamical friction towards the centres of the merged systems. There would nevertheless be a correlation between metallicity, age and kinematics within the Galactic Halo. This is a project where NGST could be crucial, especially if it allowed detection of halo stars in other nearby galaxies.

The number of such stars depends on the IMF. If this were flat, there would be fewer low-mass stars formed concurrently with those that produced the UV background. If, on the other hand, the IMF were initially steep, there could in principle be a lot of very low mass (MACHO) objects produced at high redshift, many of which would end up in the halos of galaxies like our own.

## 7 SUMMARY

Perhaps only 5 percent of star formation occurred before $`z=5`$ (the proportion could be higher if most of their light were reprocessed by dust). But these early stars were important: they generated the first UV and the first heavy elements; they provided the backdrop for the later formation of big galaxies and larger-scale structure. Large-scale structure may be elucidated within the next decade, by ambitious surveys (2-degree field and Sloan) and studies of CMB anisotropies; as will be the evolution of galaxies and their morphology. The later talks in this conference will highlight the exciting progress and prospects in this subject. But despite this progress, we shall, for a long time, confront uncertainty about the efficiency and modes of star formation in early structures on subgalactic scale.

I am grateful to my collaborators, especially Tom Abel, Zoltan Haiman, Martin Haehnelt, Avi Loeb, Jordi Miralda-Escudé, Piero Madau, Avery Meiksin, and Paulo Tozzi, for discussion of the topics described here. I am also grateful to the Royal Society for support.