The Formation of Primordial Luminous Objects

In these lecture notes we review the current knowledge about the formation of the first luminous objects. We start from the cosmological context of hierarchical models of structure formation, and discuss the main physical processes which are believed to lead to primordial star formation, i.e. the cooling processes and the chemistry of molecules (especially H2) in a metal-free gas. We then describe the techniques and results of numerical simulations, which indicate that the masses of the first luminous objects are likely to be much larger than that of present-day stars. Finally, we discuss the scenario presented above, exposing some of the most interesting problems which are currently being investigated, such as that of the feedback effects of these objects.