First Stars

The cosmic enrichment cycle of heavy elements began with the supernovae explosions of the very first stars some hundred million years after the Universe was born. Together with researchers in Australia, we search for the rare, chemically pristine stars from this epoch that have survived until the present day and enable us to study the infant Universe with sharp glasses. By measuring the detailed abundance patterns of such stars discovered in our own galactic backyard, we can constrain the nature of the first stars and supernovae as well as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The non-equilibrium 3D radiative transfer models developed by our group are particularly important for spectroscopic analysis of the most metal-poor stars, where traditional models can fail to determine correct abundances by factors of several.