"The End of the Dark Ages: The First Stars and Cosmological Reionization"

The first stars hold our interest for their uniqueness and for their potential importance to galaxy formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback on the IGM. I will review recent progress in understanding the intrinsic properties and cosmological importance of zero-metallicity stars. Metal-free composition restricts the nuclear energy source of the first stars and endows them with hotter temperatures and harder spectra than their present-day counterparts of finite metallicity. These unusual properties have important consequences for the reionization of the IGM and for early feedback from galaxies - including an early epoch of H I and He II reionization not yet discovered beyond z = 6. I will also focus on recent attempts to understand the initial mass function of the first stars using indirect constraints from reionization (WMAP), nucleosynthesis, and theory. Finally, I will comment on the long-term prospects for finding the first stars from space and from the ground.