• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.243-248
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• 2004

Disk galaxies abound with intermediate-scale structures such as OB star complexes, giant clouds, and dust spurs in a close geometrical association with spiral arms. Various mechanisms have been proposed as candidates for their origin, but a comprehensive theory should encompass fundamental physical agents such as self-gravity, magnetic fields, galactic differential rotation, and spiral arms, all of which are known to exist in disk galaxies. Recent numerical simulations incorporating all these physical processes show that magneto-Jeans instability (MJI), in which magnetic tension resists the stabilizing Coriolis force of galaxy rotation, is much more powerful than swing-amplification or the Parker instability in forming self-gravitating intermediate-scale structures. The MJI occurring in shearing and expanding flows off spiral arms rapidly forms structures elongated along the direction perpendicular to the arms, remarkably similar to dust spurs seen in HST images of spiral galaxies. In highly nonlinear stages, these spurs fragment to form bound clumps, possibly evolving into bright arm and interarm H II regions, suggesting that all these intermediate-scale structures in spiral galaxies probably share a common dynamical origin.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.167-175
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• 2003

There is accumulating evidence for a strong link between nuclear starbursts and AGN. Molecular gas in the central regions of galaxies plays a critical role in fueling nuclear starburst activity and feeding central AGN. The dense molecular ISM is accreted to the nuclear regions by stellar bars and galactic interactions. Here we describe recent observational results for the OB star forming regions in M51 and the nuclear star burst in Arp 220 - both of which have approximately the same rate of star formation per unit mass of ISM. We suggest that the maximum efficiency for forming young stars is an Eddington-like limit imposed by the radiation pressure of newly formed stars acting on the interstellar dust. This limit corresponds to approximately 500 $L_{\bigodot} / M_{\bigodot}$ for optically thick regions in which the radiation has been degraded to the NIR. Interestingly, we note that some of the same considerations can be important in AGN where the source of fuel is provided by stellar evolution mass-loss or ISM accretion. Most of the stellar mass-loss occurs from evolving red giant stars and whether their mass-loss can be accreted to a central AGN or not depends on the radiative opacity of the mass-loss material. The latter depends on whether the dust survives or is sublimated (due to radiative heating). This, in turn, is determined by the AGN luminosity and the distance of the mass-loss stars from the AGN. Several AGN phenomena such as the broad emission and absorption lines may arise in this stellar mass-loss material. The same radiation pressure limit to the accretion may arise if the AGN fuel is from the ISM since the ISM dust-to-gas ratio is the same as that of stellar mass-loss.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.45-57
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• 2018

Low-mass star-formation studies deal with the birth of individual solar-type stars as it occurs in nearby molecular clouds. While this isolated mode of star formation may not represent the most common form of stellar birth, its study often provides first evidence for the general ingredients of star formation, such as gravitational infall, disk formation, or outflow acceleration. Here I briefly review the current status and the main challenges in our understanding of low-mass star formation, with emphasis in the still mysterious pre-stellar phase. In addition to presenting by-now classical work, I also show how ALMA is starting to play a decisive role driving progress in this field.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.20 no.1 s.24
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• pp.1-5
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• 2005

We report molecular line observations of CO(1-0), $^{13}CO(1-0)$, CS(2-1), and HCN(1-0) with SRAO 6m telescope toward L1014-IRS which is thought to be a very faint infrared source embedded in previously known 'starless' core L1014. The CO(1-0) observations find several components with different velocities along the line of sight of L1014, $4km\;s^{-1}$ and between $40{\sim}50km\;s^{-1}$. We find a parsec scale CO molecular outflow at the $4km\;s^{-1}$ component for the first time the direction of which is coincident with that of the small scale (${\sim}500pc$) outflow previously found. Although the observation is not covered for whole area of the outflow, the size of the molecular outflow seems not very inconsistent with the expected age of L1014-IRS. More accurate size and shape of the molecular outflow from L1014-IRS will be determined from the full coverage mapping in CO over the outflow region in very near future.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.281-283
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• 2001

As a companion to an adiabatic version developed by Ryu and his coworkers, we have built an isothermal magnetohydrodynamic code for astrophysical flows. It is suited for the dynamical simulations of flows where cooling timescale is much shorter than dynamical timescale, as well as for turbulence and dynamo simulations in which detailed energetics are unimportant. Since a simple isothermal equation of state substitutes the energy conservation equation, the numerical schemes for isothermal flows are simpler (no contact discontinuity) than those for adiabatic flows and the resulting code is faster. Tests for shock tubes and Alfven wave decay have shown that our isothermal code has not only a good shock capturing ability, but also numerical dissipation smaller than its adiabatic analogue. As a real astrophysical application of the code, we have simulated the nonlinear three-dimensional evolution of the Parker instability. A factor of two enhancement in vertical column density has been achieved at most, and the main structures formed are sheet-like and aligned with the mean field direction. We conclude that the Parker instability alone is not a viable formation mechanism of the giant molecular clouds.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.193-197
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• 2004

Anomalies in the far-infrared [C II] 158 ${\mu}m$ line emission observed in the central one-kiloparsec regions of spiral galaxies are reviewed. Low far-infrared intensity ratios of the [C II] line to the continuum were observed in the center of the Milky Way, because the heating ratio of the gas to the dust is reduced by the soft interstellar radiation field due to late-type stars in the Galactic bulge. In contrast, such low line-to-continuum ratios were not obtained in the center of the nearby spiral M31, in spite of its bright bulge. A comparison with numerical simulations showed that a typical column density of the neutral interstellar medium between illuminating sources at $hv {\~} 1 eV $ is $N_H {\le}10^{21}\;cm^{-2}$ in the region; the medium is translucent for photons sufficiently energetic to heat the grains but not sufficiently energetic to heat the gas. This interpretation is consistent with the combination of the extremely high [C Il]/CO J = 1-0 line intensity ratios and the low recent star-forming activity in the region; the neutral interstellar medium is not sufficiently opaque to protect the species even against the moderately intense incident UV radiation. The above results were unexpected from classical views of the [C II] emission, which was generally considered to trace intense interstellar UV radiation enhanced by active star formation.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.261-263
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• 2004

We present a progress report on HCN(1-0) line observations toward starless cores to probe inward motions. We have made a single pointing survey toward the central regions of 85 starless cores and performed mapping observations of 6 infall candidate starless cores. The distributions of the velocity difference between HCN(1-0) hyperfine lines and the optically thin tracer $N_2H^+$(1-0) are significantly skewed to the blue, meaning that HCN(1-0) frequently detects inward motions. Their skewness to the blue is even greater than that of CS(2-1) Lee et al., possibly implying more infall occurrence than CS(1-0). We identify 19 infall candidates by using several characteristics illustrating spectral infall asymmetry seen in HCN(1-0) hyperfine lines, CS(3-2), CS(2-1), $DCO^+(2-1)$ and $N_2H^+$ observations. The HCN(1-0) F(O-l) with the least optical depth usually shows a similar intensity distribution to that of $N_2H^+$ which closely traces the density distribution of the cores, indicating that HCN(1-0) is less chemically affected and so believed to reflect kinematics occurring in rather inner regions of the cores. Detailed radiative transfer model fits of the spectra are underway to analyze central infall kinematics in starless cores.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.47.2-47.2
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• 2019

Observations indicate that turbulence in molecular clouds of the interstellar medium (ISM) is highly supersonic (M >> 1) and strongly magnetized (β ≈ 0.1), while in the intracluster medium (ICM) it is subsonic (M <~1) and weakly magnetized (β ≈ 100). Here, M is the turbulent Mach number and β is the ratio of the gas to magnetic pressures. Although magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in such environments has been previously studied through numerical simulations, some of its properties as well as its consequences are not yet fully described. In this talk, we report a study of MHD turbulence in molecular clouds and the ICM using a newly developed code based the high-order accurate, WENO (Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory) scheme. The simulation results using the WENO code are generally in agreement with those presented in the previous studies with, for instance, a TVD code (Porter et al. 2015 &, Park & Ryu 2019), but reveal more detailed structures on small scales. We here present and compare the properties of simulated turbulences with WENO and TVD codes, such as the spatial distribution of density, the density probability distribution functions, and the power spectra of kinetic and magnetic energies. We also describe the populations of MHD shocks and the energy dissipation at the shocks. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study on star formation processes in the ISM and shock dissipation in the ICM.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.77-85
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• 2020

In the molecular cloud G33.92+0.11A, massive stars are forming sequentially in dense cores, probably due to interaction with accreted gas. Cold dense gas, which is likely the pristine gas of the cloud, is traced by DCN line and dust continuum emission. Clear chemical differences were observed in different source locations and for different velocity components in the same line of sight. Several distinct gas components coexist in the cloud: the pristine cold gas, the accreted dense gas, and warm turbulent gas, in addition to the star-forming dense clumps. Filaments of accreted gas occur in the northern part of the A1 and A5 clumps, and the velocity gradient along these features suggests that the gas is falling toward the cloud and may have triggered the most recent star formation. The large concentration of turbulent gas in the A2 clump seems to have formed mainly through disturbances from the outside.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.117.2-117.2
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• 2011

We probe 12CO J=2-1 and 13CO J=1-0 properties of a Virgo disk galaxy, NGC 4402 which is located near the cluster center. Our goal is to study the impact of intra cluster medium (ICM) on the molecular gas of a galaxy in the cluster environment. It has been believed that cluster galaxies are deficient in atomic hydrogen gas (HI gas) compared to their field counterparts and now there is much evidence that low density ISM can be easily removed by ram pressure caused by ICM wind. Meanwhile, no significant molecular gas deficiency of the cluster galaxy population has been found yet they show overall lower star formation rate than galaxies in the field, and it is still controversy whether dense ISM can be also stripped by the ICM wind or not. NGC 4402 with truncated HI disk($D_{HI}/D_{opt}$ ~ 0.75 and only 36%of HI gas compare to field galaxies of a similar size) and a disturbed gas morphology, appears to have strong ongoing ram pressure. Using high resolution 12 and 13CO data of NGC 4402 from a Sub Millimeter Array (SMA), we probe the molecular gas properties under strong ICM pressure. We discuss how its star formation activity and hence the global color of NGC4402 would be changed in the future.