• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.225-230
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• 2001

Rarefied cosmic plasmas generally do not achieve thermodynamic equilibria, and a natural consequence of this is the presence of a significant population of charged particles with energies well above those of the bulk population. These are exemplified by the galactic cosmic rays, but the importance of these high energy populations extends well beyond that context. I review here some of the basic issues associated with the propagation and acceleration of cosmic rays, especially in the context of collisionless plasma shocks.

• Atmosphere
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.499-509
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• 2017

Possible links among cosmic ray, cloud, and climate have scientific uncertainties. The reputed topics have been highly controversial during several decades. A link between the atmospheric ionization by galactic cosmic rays (GCR), which is modulated by solar activities, and global cloud cover was firstly proposed in 1997. Some researchers suggested that the GCR can stimulate the formation of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the atmosphere, and then the higher CCN concentrations may lead to an increase of cloud cover, resulting in a cooling of the Earth's climate, and vise versa. The CLOUD (Cosmic leaving outdoor droplets) experiment was designed to study the effect of GCR on the formation of atmospheric aerosols and clouds under precisely controlled laboratory conditions. A state-of-the-art chamber experiment has greatly advanced our scientific understanding of the aerosol formation in early stage and its nucleation processes if the GCR effect is considered or not. Many studies on the climate-GCR (or space weather) connection including the CLOUD experiment have been carried out during the several decades. Although it may not be easy to clarify the physical connection, the recent scientific approaches such as the laboratory experiments or modeling studies give some implications that the research definitively contributed to reduce the scientific uncertainties of natural and anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing as well as to better understand the formation processes of fine particulate matters as an important parameter of air quality forecast.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.549-552
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• 2015

The galactic magnetic field (GMF) and the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) affect the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) from the source to us. Here we examine the influences of the GMF/IGFM and the dependence of their sky distribution on galactic latitude, b. We analyze the correlation between the arrival direction (AD) of UHECRs observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the large-scale structure of the universe in regions of sky divided by b. Specifically, we compare the AD distribution of observed UHECRs to that of mock UHECRs generated from a source model constructed with active galactic nuclei. Our source model has the smearing angle as a free parameter that reflects the deflection angle of UHECRs from the source. The results show that larger smearing angles are required for the observed distribution of UHECRs in lower galactic latitude regions. We obtain, for instance, a $1{\sigma}$ credible interval for smearing angle of $0^{\circ}{\leq}{\theta}_s{\leq}72^{\circ}$ at high galactic latitudes, $60^{\circ}$ < $\left|{b}\right|{\leq}90^{\circ}$, and of $75^{\circ}{\leq}{\theta}_s{\leq}180^{\circ}$, $-30^{\circ}{\leq}b{\leq}30^{\circ}$, at low galactic latitudes, respectively. The results show that the influence of the GMF is stronger than that of the IGMF. In addition, we can estimate the strength of GMFs by these values; if we assume that UHECRs would have heavier nuclei, the estimated strengths of GMF are consistent with the observational value of a few ${\mu}G$. More data from the future experiments may make UHECR astronomy possible.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.96.2-96.2
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• 2013

The solar images are taken by the CCD detectors of the Sun monitoring satellites. The solar images are constructed after removing the traces of cosmic rays on the raw CCD data files. Thus, while applying the method of removing the cosmic rays traces, we can estimate the cosmic rays flux by counting the number of traces. The cosmic ray flux in the steady state might be the sum of the solar and galactic cosmic rays. However, the abrupt change in the flux could be assumed to be originated from the Sun. Therefore, we can identify the solar origins of the sudden solar cosmic ray flux changes from the phenomena shown in the processed solar images taken by SOHO/EIT. As the results, the estimated cosmic ray flux in the steady state is the anti-correlated with sunspot numbers, which shows the minima in cosmic ray flux at the solar cycle maxima defined by the sunspot numbers. The profiles of estimated solar cosmic ray associated with the ground level enhancements have the significant increase in the cosmic ray flux with good correlation. Thus, the solar images are valuable data useful in estimating the solar cosmic ray long term and transient flux variations.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.105-110
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• 2003

Recent observations of galaxy clusters in radio and X-ray indicate that cosmic rays and magnetic fields may be energetically important in the intracluster medium. According to the estimates based on theses observational studies, the combined pressure of these two components of the intracluster medium may range between $10\%{\~}100\%$ of gas pressure, although their total energy is probably time dependent. Hence, these non-thermal components may have influenced the formation and evolution of cosmic structures, and may provide unique and vital diagnostic information through various radiations emitted via their interactions with surrounding matter and cosmic background photons. We suggest that shock waves associated with cosmic structures, along with individual sources such as active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies, supply the cosmic rays and magnetic fields to the intracluster medium and to surrounding large scale structures. In order to study 1) the properties of cosmic shock waves emerging during the large scale structure formation of the universe, and 2) the dynamical influence of cosmic rays, which were ejected by AGN-like sources into the intracluster medium, on structure formation, we have performed two sets of N-body /hydrodynamic simulations of cosmic structure formation. In this contribution, we report the preliminary results of these simulations.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.447-454
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• 2004

During the hierarchical formation of large scale structure in the universe, the progressive collapse and merging of dark matter should inevitably drive shocks into the gas, with nonthermal particle acceleration as a natural consequence. Two topics in this regard are discussed, emphasizing what important things nonthermal phenomena may tell us about the structure formation (SF) process itself. 1. Inverse Compton gamma-rays from large scale SF shocks and non-gravitational effects, and the implications for probing the warm-hot intergalactic medium. We utilize a semi-analytic approach based on Monte Carlo merger trees that treats both merger and accretion shocks self-consistently. 2. Production of $^6Li$ by cosmic rays from SF shocks in the early Galaxy, and the implications for probing Galaxy formation and uncertain physics on sub-Galactic scales. Our new observations of metal-poor halo stars with the Subaru High Dispersion Spectrograph are highlighted.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.38.1-38.1
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• 2015

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are one of the most energetic astrophysical events and are thought to be the dominant source of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs). A recent report on observations of gamma rays from the vicinity of SNRs have shown strong evidence that Galactic CR protons are accelerated by the shock waves of the SNRs. The actual gamma-ray emission from pion decay should depend on the diffusion of CRs in the interstellar medium. In order to quantitatively analyze the diffusion of high-energy CRs from acceleration sites, we have performed test particle numerical simulations of CR protons using a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulation of an interstellar medium swept-up by a blast wave. We analyse the CRs diffusion at a length scale of order a few pc, and show the Richtmeyer-Meshkov instability can provide enough turbulence downstream of the shock to make the diffusion coefficient close to the Bohm level for energy larger than 30 TeV for a realistic interstellar medium.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.33.1-33.1
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• 2004

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 1993

In order to explore the time dependence of the closure parameters of the two-fluid calculations for supernova remnants and the terminal shocks of stellar winds, we have considered a simple model in which the time evolution of the cosmic-ray distribution function was followed in the test-particle limit using the Bohm diffusion model. The particles are mostly accelerated to relativistic energy either in the free expansion phase of the SNRs or in the early phase of the stellar winds, so the evolution of the closure parameters during these early stages is substantial and should be followed correctly. We have also calculated the maximum momentum which is limited by either the age or the curvature of these spherical shocks. We found that SNRs expanding into the medium where the gas density decreases with the distance from the explosion center might be necessary to explain the observed power-law distribution of the galactic cosmic rays. The energy loss due to the escaping energetic particles has been estimated for the terminal shocks of the stellar winds.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.38.3-38.3
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• 2015

Recently, the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO), the largest ground-based project for detecting ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), published their 10-year data. We can access an unprecedented number of UHECR data observed by the project, which give us a possibility to get an accurate statistical test result. In this work, we investigate the influence of the galactic magnetic field (GMF) on the distribution of UHECRs by searching the correlation with the large-scale structure (LSS) of the universe. We simulate the mock UHECR events whose trajectories from the sources would be deflected by the Gaussian smearing angle which reflects the influence by the GMF. By the statistical test, we compare the correlation between the expected/observed distribution of UHECRs and the LSS of the universe in the regions of sky divided by the galactic latitude, varying the smearing angle. Here, we assume the deflections by the GMF are mainly dependent on the galactic latitude. Using the maximum likelihood estimation, we find the best-fit smearing angle in each region. If we get a trend that best-fit smearing angles differ from each region, the influence of GMF may be stronger than that of intergalactic magnetic fields (IGMF) because it is known that the distribution of IGMF follows the LSS of the universe. Also, we can estimate the strength of the GMF using the best-fit parameter by the maximum likelihood.