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  1. Abstract

    The recently launched James Webb Space Telescope promises unparalleled advances in our understanding of the first stars and galaxies, but realizing this potential requires cosmological simulations that capture the key physical processes that affected these objects. Here, we show that radiative transfer and subgrid turbulent mixing are two such processes. By comparing simulations with and without radiative transfer but with exactly the same physical parameters and subgrid turbulent mixing model, we show that tracking radiative transfer suppresses the Population III star formation density by a factor ≈4. In both simulations, ≳90% of Population III stars are found in the unresolved pristine regions tracked by our subgrid model, which does a better job at modeling the regions surrounding proto-galaxy cores where metals from supernovae take tens of megayears to mix thoroughly. At the same time, radiative transfer suppresses Population III star formation, via the development of ionized bubbles that slow gas accretion in these regions, and it results in compact high-redshift galaxies that are surrounded by isolated low-mass satellites. Thus, turbulent mixing and radiative transfer are both essential processes that must be included to accurately model the morphology, composition, and growth of primordial galaxies.

     
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    ABSTRACT We report three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of shocks (${\cal M_{\rm shock}}\ge 4$) interacting with fractal multicloud layers. The evolution of shock–multicloud systems consists of four stages: a shock-splitting phase in which reflected and refracted shocks are generated, a compression phase in which the forward shock compresses cloud material, an expansion phase triggered by internal heating and shock re-acceleration, and a mixing phase in which shear instabilities generate turbulence. We compare multicloud layers with narrow ($\sigma _{\rho }=1.9\bar{\rho }$) and wide ($\sigma _{\rho }=5.9\bar{\rho }$) lognormal density distributions characteristic of Mach ≈ 5 supersonic turbulence driven by solenoidal and compressive modes. Our simulations show that outflowing cloud material contains imprints of the density structure of their native environments. The dynamics and disruption of multicloud systems depend on the porosity and the number of cloudlets in the layers. ‘Solenoidal’ layers mix less, generate less turbulence, accelerate faster, and form a more coherent mixed-gas shell than the more porous ‘compressive’ layers. Similarly, multicloud systems with more cloudlets quench mixing via a shielding effect and enhance momentum transfer. Mass loading of diffuse mixed gas is efficient in all models, but direct dense gas entrainment is highly inefficient. Dense gas only survives in compressive clouds, but has low speeds. If normalized with respect to the shock-passage time, the evolution shows invariance for shock Mach numbers ≥10 and different cloud-generating seeds, and slightly weaker scaling for lower Mach numbers and thinner cloud layers. Multicloud systems also have better convergence properties than single-cloud systems, with a resolution of eight cells per cloud radius being sufficient to capture their overall dynamics. 
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