Dust production factories in the early universe: Formation of carbon grains in red-supergiant winds of very massive population III stars

Abstract

We investigate the formation of dust in a stellar wind during the red-supergiant (RSG) phase of a very massive Population III star with a zero-age main sequence mass of 500 M⊙. We show that, in a carbon-rich wind with a constant velocity, carbon grains can form with a lognormal-like size distribution, and that all of the carbon available for dust formation finally condenses into dust for wide ranges of the mass-loss rate ((0.1-3) × 10-3 M⊙ yr-1) and wind velocity (1-100 km s-1). We also find that the acceleration of the wind, driven by newly formed dust, suppresses the grain growth but still allows more than half of the gas-phase carbon to finally be locked up in dust grains. These results indicate that, at most, 1.7 M⊙ of carbon grains can form during the RSG phase of 500 M⊙ Population III stars. Such a high dust yield could place very massive primordial stars as important sources of dust at the very early epoch of the universe if the initial mass function of Population III stars was top-heavy. We also briefly discuss a new formation scenario of carbon-rich ultra-metal-poor stars, considering feedback from very massive Population III stars. © 2014. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.