Neural-network Chemical Emulator for First-star Formation: Robust Iterative Predictions Over a Wide Density Range

Abstract We present a neural-network emulator for the thermal and chemical evolution in Population III star formation. The emulator accurately reproduces the thermochemical evolution over a wide density range spanning 21 orders of magnitude (10 −3 –10 18 cm −3 ), tracking six primordial species: H, H 2 , e − , H + , H − , and H <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> . To handle the broad dynamic range, we partition the density range into five subregions and train separate deep operator networks (DeepONets) in each region. When applied to randomly sampled thermochemical states, the emulator achieves relative errors below 10% in over 90% of cases for both temperature and chemical abundances (except for the rare species H <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> ). The emulator is roughly 10 times faster on a CPU and more than 1000 times faster for batched predictions on a GPU, compared with conventional numerical integration. Furthermore, to ensure robust predictions under many iterations, we introduce a novel timescale-based update method, where a short-time-step update of each variable is computed by rescaling the predicted change over a longer time step equal to its characteristic variation timescale. In one-zone collapse calculations, the results from the timescale-based method agree well with traditional numerical integration, even with many iterations at a time step as short as 10 −4 of the free-fall time. This proof-of-concept study suggests the potential for neural network-based chemical emulators to accelerate hydrodynamic simulations of star formation.