发表机构
Oregon State University; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Stony Brook University; Flatiron Institute; Princeton University; Stanislaus State University（俄勒冈州立大学; 美国国家航空航天局戈达德太空飞行中心; 石溪大学; 熨斗研究所; 普林斯顿大学; 斯坦尼斯劳斯州立大学）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
本研究提出通过伽马射线暴识别宇宙第一代恒星（第三族恒星），发现其光变曲线时标和峰值能量等特征与第一族暴不同，并可能解释爱因斯坦探针探测到的软X射线瞬时辐射。
AI 中文摘要
第三族（Pop III）恒星，即宇宙中的第一代恒星，几十年来一直未被直接探测到。詹姆斯·韦布空间望远镜的出现，凭借其对高红移源前所未有的灵敏度，重新激发了人们识别这些原始恒星的兴趣。尽管先前的研究已探索了通过引力透镜直接探测第三族恒星的途径，但在此我们研究一种替代方法：通过大质量第三族前身星死亡时产生的伽马射线暴（GRBs）来识别第三族恒星。我们生成了源参考系下的模拟观测数据，并发现尽管第三族和第一族（Pop I）伽马射线暴共享许多共同属性，但若干观测量有可能区分这两类群体。特别是，光变曲线时标、各向同性等效能量、峰值能量以及伽马射线暴在经验瞬时辐射关联中的位置，都敏感地依赖于前身星的质量和爆炸能量。我们发现，与第一族伽马射线暴相比，第三族伽马射线暴往往表现出更长的特征时标和更高的各向同性等效峰值能量。最后，我们表明第三族伽马射线暴可能为爱因斯坦探针最近探测到的软X射线瞬时辐射群体提供一个有前景的来源，从而为探测第一代恒星提供了一条补充途径。
英文摘要
Population (Pop) III stars, the first generation of stars in the Universe, have eluded direct detection for decades. The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope, with its unprecedented sensitivity to high-redshift sources, has renewed interest in the prospects for identifying these primordial stars. While previous studies have explored the direct detection of Pop III stars through gravitational lensing, here we investigate an alternative approach: identifying Pop III stars through gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) produced by the deaths of massive Pop III progenitors. We generate source-frame mock observables and find that, although Pop III and Pop I GRBs share many common properties, several observables can potentially distinguish between the two populations. In particular, light-curve timescales, isotropic-equivalent energies, peak energies, and the locations of GRBs in empirical prompt-emission correlations depend sensitively on the mass and explosion energy of the progenitor. We find that Pop III GRBs tend to exhibit longer characteristic timescales and higher isotropic-equivalent peak energies than their Pop I counterparts. Finally, we show that Pop III GRBs may provide a promising origin for the population of soft X-ray prompt emission recently detected by the Einstein Probe, offering a complementary avenue for probing the first generations of stars.
