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The first stars mark the transition from the cosmic dark ages to the modern universe that we know today, a universe that is filled with stars, galaxies, and heavy elements essential to life. The first stars stand out because of their pristine primordial initial composition and their pre-galactic formation environment. Their unique composition dramatically alter their evolution, their structure, the way they die as supernovae, and their resulting nucleosynthesis. The special circumstances under which these stars were formed also impacts their characteristic initial mass distribution, the initial mass function. Generally it is assumed that these stars, on average, were significantly more massive than present-day stars. No low-mass Population III star that could have survived to the present day has ever been found. Some speculations exist that even supermassive primordial stars may have formed that laid the basis for supermassive black holes in the centres of early galaxies including high-red shift quasars. I will give an overview of the evolution and death of these first stars and their supernova. I will also discuss nucleosynthesis signatures as possible diagnostics that have survived to the present day. |
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