• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.309-313
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• 2015

If the present universe is slightly open then pre-inflation curvature would appear as a cosmic dark-flow component of the CMB dipole moment. We summarize current cosmological constraints on this cosmic dark flow and analyze the possible constraints on parameters characterizing the pre-inflating universe in an inflation model with a present-day very slightly open ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology. We employ an analytic model to show that for a broad class of inflation-generating effective potentials, the simple requirement that the observed dipole moment represents the pre-inflation curvature as it enters the horizon allows one to set upper and lower limits on the magnitude and wavelength scale of pre-inflation fluctuations in the inflaton field and the curvature parameter of the pre-inflation universe, as a function of the fraction of the total initial energy density in the inflaton field. We estimate that if the current CMB dipole is a universal dark flow (or if it is near the upper limit set by the Planck Collaboration) then the present constraints on ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmological parameters imply rather small curvature ${\Omega}_k{\sim}0.1$ for the pre-inflating universe for a broad range of the fraction of the total energy in the inflaton field at the onset of inflation. Such small pre-inflation curvature might be indicative of open-inflation models in which there are two epochs of inflation.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.53-58
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• 2010

The origin of the galaxies represents an important focus of current cosmological research, both observational and theoretical. Its resolution involves a comprehensive understanding of star formation and evolution, galaxy dynamics, supermassive black holes, and the cosmology of the very early universe. In this paper, I will review our current understanding of galaxy formation and review some of the challenges that lie ahead. Specific issues that I address include the galaxy luminosity function, feedback by supernovae and by AGN, and downsizing. I argue that current evidence favours two distinct modes of star formation in the early universe, in order to account for the origin of disk and massive spheroidal galaxies. However perhaps the most urgent need is for a robust theory of star formation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.58.5-58.5
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• 2019

The astrophysical and cosmological observations are consistent with the cold dark matter in the standard cosmology. I review the possible candidates of cold dark matter and their production in the early Universe with their possible detection.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.49-67
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• 2014

A novel method to characterize the topology of the early-universe intergalactic medium during the epoch of cosmic reionization is presented. The 21-cm radiation background from high redshift is analyzed through calculation of the 2-dimensional (2D) genus. The radiative transfer of hydrogen- ionizing photons and ionization-rate equations are calculated in a suite of numerical simulations under various input parameters. The 2D genus is calculated from the mock 21-cm images of high-redshift universe. We construct the 2D genus curve by varying the threshold differential brightness temperature, and compare this to the 2D genus curve of the underlying density field. We find that (1) the 2D genus curve reflects the evolutionary track of cosmic reionization and (2) the 2D genus curve can discriminate between certain reionization scenarios and thus indirectly probe the properties of radiation-sources. Choosing the right beam shape of a radio antenna is found crucial for this analysis. Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is found to be a suitable apparatus for this analysis in terms of sensitivity, even though some deterioration of the data for this purpose is unavoidable under the planned size of the antenna core.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.45.1-45.1
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• 2021

Horizon Run 5 (HR5) is a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation which captures the properties of the Universe on aGpc scale while achieving a resolution of 1kpc. This enormous dynamic range allows us to simultaneously capture the physics of the cosmic web on very large scales and account for the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxies on much smaller scales. On the back of a remarkable achievement of this, we have finished to run follow-up simulations which have 2 times larger volume than before and are expected to complementary to some limitations of previous HR simulations both for the study on the large scale features and the expansion history in a distant Universe. For these simulations, we consider the sub-grid physics of radiative heating/cooling, reionization, star formation, SN/AGN feedbacks, chemical evolution and the growth of super-massive blackholes. In order to do this project, we implemented a hybrid MPI-OpenMP version of the RAMSES code, 'RAMSES-OMP', which is specifically designed for modern many-core many thread parallel systems. These simulation successfully reproduce various observation result and provide a large amount of statistical samples of Lyman-alpha emitters and protoclusters which are important to understand the formation and expansion history of early universe. These are invaluable assets for the interpretation of current ΛCDM cosmology and current/upcoming deep surveys of the Universe, such as the world largest narrow band imaging survey, ODIN (One-hundred-square-degree Dark energy camera Imaging in Narrow band).

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.67-79
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• 2019

We present a semi-analytical method to calculate the global evolution of the ionized state of the intergalactic medium, on the basis of physically motivated star formation histories in the early universe. This method incorporates not only the conventional scenarios in which the star formation rate is proportional to the growth rate of the halo collapse fraction, but also the more sophisticated scenarios in which the star formation is self-regulated. We show that this variance in the star-formation model strongly impacts the resulting reionization history, which bears a prospect for observational discrimination of these models. We discuss how observations of the anisotropic polarization of the cosmic microwave background and the global 21cm signal from the high-redshift universe, most notably by Planck and EDGES, may probe the history of reionization.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.32.1-32.1
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• 2014

Astronomical observations strongly suggest that the expansion rate of our universe is currently under acceleration. The nature of the so-called dark energy causing the acceleration is unknown, and it is one of the fundamental mysteries in the present day theoretical cosmology. Here we briefly review the current state of cosmic dark energy research in both theoretical and observational sides. Constraints on dynamical dark energy models (e.g., w-fluid, quintessence, and modified gravity) with recent observational data from type Ia supernovae, cosmic microwave background radiation, and large-scale structures in the universe indicate a preferred direction toward the simplest ${\Lambda}$CDM world model. We also discuss some issues regarding the early dark energy model and the spherical collapse of matter in the presence of dark energy.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.21-55
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• 2015

If the Universe is dominated by cold dark matter and dark energy as in the currently popular ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology, it is expected that large scale structures form gradually, with galaxy clusters of mass $M{\geq}10^{14}M_{\odot}$ appearing at around 6 Gyrs after the Big Bang (z ~ 1). Here, we report the discovery of 59 massive structures of galaxies with masses greater than a few times $10^{13}M_{\odot}$ at redshifts between z = 0.6 and 4.5 in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey fields. The massive structures are identified by running top-hat filters on the two dimensional spatial distribution of magnitude-limited samples of galaxies using a combination of spectroscopic and photometric redshifts. We analyze the Millennium simulation data in a similar way to the analysis of the observational data in order to test the ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology. We find that there are too many massive structures (M > $7{\times}10^{13}M_{\odot}$) observed at z > 2 in comparison with the simulation predictions by a factor of a few, giving a probability of < 1/2500 of the observed data being consistent with the simulation. Our result suggests that massive structures have emerged early, but the reason for the discrepancy with the simulation is unclear. It could be due to the limitation of the simulation such as the lack of key, unrecognized ingredients (strong non-Gaussianity or other baryonic physics), or simply a difficulty in the halo mass estimation from observation, or a fundamental problem of the ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology. On the other hand, the over-abundance of massive structures at high redshifts does not favor heavy neutrino mass of ~ 0.3 eV or larger, as heavy neutrinos make the discrepancy between the observation and the simulation more pronounced by a factor of 3 or more.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.135-140
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• 2005

This paper summarizes the recent progress made by our group at Seoul National University on studies of the evolution and formation of distant galaxies. Various research projects are currently underway, which include: (i) the number density of distant early-type galaxies (z < 1); (ii) the optical-NIR color gradient of nearby early-type galaxies; (iii) J - K-selected Extremely Red Objects (EROs) in field (CDF-S) and the cluster environment; and (iv) the Lyman-break galaxies in the Spitzer First Look Survey (FLS) field. These works will constrain the mass evolution and the star formation history of galaxies in different environments, and the results will serve as useful contraints on galaxy formation models.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.72.3-73
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• 2021

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) are caused by acoustic density waves in the early universe and act as a standard ruler in the clustering pattern of galaxies in the late Universe. Measuring the BAO feature in the 2-point correlation function of a sample of galaxies allows us to estimate cosmological distances to the galaxies mean redshift, , which is important for testing and constraining the cosmology model. The BAO feature is also expected to appear in the higher order statistics. In this work we measure the generalized spatial N-point point correlation functions up to 4th order. We made measurements of the 2, 3, and 4-point correlation functions in the SDSS-III DR12 CMASS data, comprising of 777,202 galaxies. The errors and covariances matrices were estimated from 500 mock catalogues. We created a theoretical model for these statistics by measuring the N-point functions in halo catalogues produced by the approximate Lagrangian perturbation theory based simulation code, PINOCCHIO. We created simulations using initial conditions with and without the BAO feature. We find that the BAO is detected to high significance up to the 4-point correlation function.