The Supersonic Project: Early Star Formation with the Streaming Velocity

Abstract At high redshifts ( z ≳ 12), the relative velocity between baryons and dark matter (the so-called streaming velocity) significantly affects star formation in low-mass objects. Streaming substantially reduces the abundance of low-mass gas objects while simultaneously allowing for the formation of supersonically induced gas objects (SIGOs) and their associated star clusters outside of dark matter halos. Here, we present a study of the population-level effects of streaming on star formation within both halos and SIGOs in a set of simulations with and without streaming. Notably, we find that streaming actually enhances star formation within individual halos of all masses at redshifts between z = 12 and z = 20. This is demonstrated both as an increased star formation rate per object as well as an enhancement of the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation for objects with streaming. We find that our simulations are consistent with some observations at high redshift, but on a population level, they continue to underpredict star formation relative to the majority of observations. Notably, our simulations do not include feedback and so can be taken as an upper limit on the star formation rate, exacerbating these differences. However, simulations of overdense regions (both with and without streaming) agree with observations, suggesting a strategy for extracting information about the overdensity and streaming velocity in a given survey volume in future observations.