Role of the First Stars

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Reionization was accomplished by the prodigous UV output of the most massive stars. Objects such as quasars were also possible UV contributors.
Due to the small amount of observational evidence available (see slides Observational Evidence from WMAP, low metalicity stars, and gamma ray bursts), most of the study of primordial star formation is done via simulation. There are currently two main groups of simulators: Bromm, Coppi, and Larson use a smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) approach with sink particles and power law density fluctuations in the dark matter initial conditions(Bromm et al. 2003). Abel, Bryan, and Norman use adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), a grid based code, with more realistic initial DM overdensities beginning at z=100 (Abel et al 2002).