Observing population III stars in the pristine region
Abstract
The detection of the long-sought Population III (Pop III) stars is, perhaps, one of the most intriguing missing links in modern astronomy. Caustic crossing events (CCE) -- extreme magnification at the critical curves of galaxy clusters of individual stars at cosmological distances -- are postulated to allow for the direct detection of individual Pop III stars. However, in the usual CCE regime, the abundant existence of intracluster stars as microlenses limits the maximum magnification attainable, thus limiting the theoretical detection of luminous stars to relatively low redshifts, significantly smaller than the redshifts where Pop III stars are expected to exist. Here in this letter, we propose to observe Pop III stellar populations as CCEs in the pristine regions of merging clusters. Pristine regions are defined as areas in the lens where the intracluster light, and hence the corresponding stelalr microlenses, is exceptionally low. In thes regions, the low density of microlenses allows background stellar populations to achieve magnification closer to the theoretical limit (whitout microlenses). We show that the maximum magnification in the pristine region scales inversely with the surface mass density of stellar microlenses. Adopting Pop III isochrones, regular James-Webb ∼29mag observations are sufficient to detect individual Pop III stars in pristine regions, offering a unique observational strategy to detect Pop III stars with the incoming cluster observations. The intermediate regions between high-redshift merging clusters (such as El Gordo) are naturally devoid of microlenses and constitute exceptional targets for the search of Pop III stars.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026observing,
title = {{Observing population III stars in the pristine region}},
author = {Sung Kei Li and Jose M. Diego and Jose M. Palencia},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.32347},
eprint = {2609.32347},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32347},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Observing population III stars in the pristine region
AU - Sung Kei Li
AU - Jose M. Diego
AU - Jose M. Palencia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/26
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.32347
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32347
AB - The detection of the long-sought Population III (Pop III) stars is, perhaps, one of the most intriguing missing links in modern astronomy. Caustic crossing events (CCE) -- extreme magnification at the critical curves of galaxy clusters of individual stars at cosmological distances -- are postulated to allow for the direct detection of individual Pop III stars. However, in the usual CCE regime, the abundant existence of intracluster stars as microlenses limits the maximum magnification attainable, thus limiting the theoretical detection of luminous stars to relatively low redshifts, significantly smaller than the redshifts where Pop III stars are expected to exist. Here in this letter, we propose to observe Pop III stellar populations as CCEs in the pristine regions of merging clusters. Pristine regions are defined as areas in the lens where the intracluster light, and hence the corresponding stelalr microlenses, is exceptionally low. In thes regions, the low density of microlenses allows background stellar populations to achieve magnification closer to the theoretical limit (whitout microlenses). We show that the maximum magnification in the pristine region scales inversely with the surface mass density of stellar microlenses. Adopting Pop III isochrones, regular James-Webb ∼29mag observations are sufficient to detect individual Pop III stars in pristine regions, offering a unique observational strategy to detect Pop III stars with the incoming cluster observations. The intermediate regions between high-redshift merging clusters (such as El Gordo) are naturally devoid of microlenses and constitute exceptional targets for the search of Pop III stars.
ER -