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The First Stars and Galaxies: Challenges for the Next Decade Participants
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Poster
Title: Finding High-Redshift Dark Stars with the James Webb Space Telescope Author(s): Erik Zackrisson Abstract: The annihilation of dark matter particles in the centers of minihalos may lead to the formation of so-called dark stars, which are cooler, larger, more massive and potentially long-lived than conventional Population III stars. Here, we investigate the prospects of detecting high-redshift dark stars with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We find that a direct detection of individual dark stars with the JWST is unlikely without the gravitational lensing provided by foreground objects. However, by exploiting foreground galaxy clusters as gravitational telescopes, certain varieties of cool (Teff < 30000 K) dark stars should be within reach at z ~ 10. We also discuss different strategies for identifying dark stars in photometric surveys carried out by the JWST.
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