2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/109411We investigate thermal regime of the baryons behind shock waves arising in the process of virialization of dark matter halos. We find a fraction of the shocked gas cooled by radiation of HD molecules down to the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB): this fraction increases sharply from about $f_{\rm c}\sim 10^{-3}$ for dark halos of $M=5\times 10^7\msun$ to $\sim 0.1$ for halos with $M=10^8\msun$ at $z=10$. We show, however, that further increase of the mass does not lead to a significant growth of $f_{\rm c}$ -- the assymptotic value for $M\gg 10^8\msun$ is of 0.2. We estimate star formation rate associated with such shock waves, and show that it can be a small but not negligible fraction of the star formation connected with cooling by HI and H$_2$. We argue that extremely metal-poor low-mass stars in the Milky Way may have been formed from primordial gas behind such shocks.17 pages, 5 figures, submitted in New Astronomy, reference list extendedAstrophysicstext