• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.141-145
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• 2007

Here we analyze if the ionized shells associated with giant HII regions represent the progenitors of the larger neutral hydrogen supershells detected in the Milky Way and other spiral and dwarf irregular galaxies. We calculate the evolutionary tracks that 12 HII shells found by Relano et al. (2005, 2007) would have if they expanded into the interstellar medium because of multiple supernovae explosions occurring inside the cavity. We find, contrary to Relano et al. (2007), that the evolutionary tracks of these HII shells are inconsistent with the observed parameters of the largest and most massive neutral hydrogen supershells. Thus, an additional energy source to the multiple supernovae explosions is required in order to explain the origin of the most massive neutral hydrogen shells.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.71.3-72
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• 2016

운동학적으로 측정된 질량과 측광으로 측정된 질량이 불일치하는 질량 불일치 문제는 현대천문학의 중요한 문제이다. 현재 이러한 질량 불일치에 대한 두 가지 해결책이 제시 되었다. 하나는 현대 표준우주론인 ${\Lambda}CDM$ 패러다임의 핵심 요소인 암흑물질, 다른 하나는 Milgrom에 의해 제시된 수정된 뉴턴역학(Modified Newtonian dynamics: MOND)이다. 두 방법에 대한 많은 연구가 진행되었는데, 최근 연구 결과에 의하면 나선형 은하의 회전속도 윤곽은 MOND와 잘 부합하나 타원은하에 대해서는 불명확하다. 여기서 우리는 ATLAS3D project 에서 얻어진 260개의 조기형 은하 중 거의 원형인 11개의 타원은하들을 선별하여 표준패러다임(뉴턴역학과 암흑물질)과 MOND 하에서 속도분산 윤곽에 대한 모델링을 수행하였다. 속도분산 anisotropy에 대한 parametric 모형을 가정하고 다음의 결과를 얻었다. (1) anisotropy가 속도분산 윤곽에 큰 영향을 준다는 것을 확인하였고, (2) 전체적으로 표준패러다임과 MOND 중 어느 패러다임이 관측된 속도분산 윤곽에 더 잘 부합하는지 결론을 도출하기가 어려웠고, (3) 은하 개별적으로는 표준패러다임 하에서 요구되는 암흑물질의 양이 달랐고, 선호되는 MOND 모형에서도 미세한 차이가 나타나는 것으로 보였다. 이 결과는 anisotropy에 대한 더 나은 이해를 바탕으로 개선될 수 있을 것이다.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.59.1-59.1
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• 2019

I will compute the rate of merger events in the multi-scale initial conditions to forecast special events driving the anisotropic assembly of dark matter halos and understand their impact on galaxy formation. Beyond halo mergers, I consider all sets of mergers, including wall and lament mergers, as they impact the geometry of galactic infall. Their one- and two-points statistics are computed as a function of cosmic time. I establish the relation between merger rates and connectivity, which is then used to assess the impact the large scale structures on assembly bias. The anisotropy of the cosmic web, as encoded in this theory, is a signi cant ingredient to describe jointly the physics and dynamics of galaxies in their environment, e.g. in the context of intrinsic alignments or morphological diversity.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.43.1-43.1
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• 2018

Star formation in galaxies predominantly takes place in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). While it is widely believed that UV radiation feedback from young massive stars can destroy natal GMCs by exciting HII regions and driving their expansion, our understanding on how this actually occurs remains incomplete. To quantitatively assess the effect of UV radiation feedback on cloud disruption, we conduct a series of theoretical studies on the dynamics of HII regions and its role in controlling the star formation efficiency (SFE) and lifetime of GMCs in a wide range of star-forming environments. We first develop a semi-analytic model for the expansion of spherical dusty HII regions driven by the combination of gas and radiation pressures, finding that GMCs in normal disk galaxies are destroyed by gas-pressure driven expansion with SFE < 10%, while more dense and massive clouds with higher SFE are disrupted primarily by radiation pressure. Next, we turn to radiation hydrodynamic simulations of GMC dispersal to allow for self-consistent star formation as well as inhomogeneous density and velocity structures arising from supersonic turbulence. For this, we develop an efficient parallel algorithm for ray tracing method, which enables us to probe a range of cloud masses and sizes. Our parameter study shows that the net SFE, lifetime (measured in units of free-fall time), and the importance of radiation pressure (relative to photoionization) increase primarily with the initial surface density of the cloud. Unlike in the idealized spherical model, we find that the dominant mass loss mechanism is photoevaporation rather than dynamical ejection and that a significant fraction of radiation escapes through low optical-depth channels. We will discuss the astronomical.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.89-95
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• 2003

Observations of dark matter dominated dwarf and low surface brightness disk galaxies favor density profiles with a flat-density core, while cold dark matter (CDM) N-body simulations form halos with central cusps, instead. This apparent discrepancy has motivated a re-examination of the microscopic nature of the dark matter in order to explain the observed halo profiles, including the suggestion that CDM has a non-gravitational self-interaction. We study the formation and evolution of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) halos. We find analytical, fully cosmological similarity solutions for their dynamics, which take proper account of the collisional interaction of SIDM particles, based on a fluid approximation derived from the Boltzmann equation. The SIDM particles scatter each other elastically, which results in an effective thermal conductivity that heats the halo core and flattens its density profile. These similarity solutions are relevant to galactic and cluster halo formation in the CDM model. We assume that the local density maximum which serves as the progenitor of the halo has an initial mass profile ${\delta}M / M {\propto} M^{-{\epsilon}$, as in the familiar secondary infall model. If $\epsilon$ = 1/6, SIDM halos will evolve self-similarly, with a cold, supersonic infall which is terminated by a strong accretion shock. Different solutions arise for different values of the dimensionless collisionality parameter, $Q {\equiv}{\sigma}p_br_s$, where $\sigma$ is the SIDM particle scattering cross section per unit mass, $p_b$ is the cosmic mean density, and $r_s$ is the shock radius. For all these solutions, a flat-density, isothermal core is present which grows in size as a fixed fraction of $r_s$. We find two different regimes for these solutions: 1) for $Q < Q_{th}({\simeq} 7.35{\times} 10^{-4}$), the core density decreases and core size increases as Q increases; 2) for $Q > Q_{th}$, the core density increases and core size decreases as Q increases. Our similarity solutions are in good agreement with previous results of N-body simulation of SIDM halos, which correspond to the low-Q regime, for which SIDM halo profiles match the observed galactic rotation curves if $Q {\~} [8.4 {\times}10^{-4} - 4.9 {\times} 10^{-2}]Q_{th}$, or ${\sigma}{\~} [0.56 - 5.6] cm^2g{-1}$. These similarity solutions also show that, as $Q {\to}{\infty}$, the central density acquires a singular profile, in agreement with some earlier simulation results which approximated the effects of SIDM collisionality by considering an ordinary fluid without conductivity, i.e. the limit of mean free path ${\lambda}_{mfp}{\to} 0$. The intermediate regime where $Q {\~} [18.6 - 231]Q_{th}$ or ${\sigma}{\~} [1.2{\times}10^4 - 2.7{\times}10^4] cm^2g{-1}$, for which we find flat-density cores comparable to those of the low-Q solutions preferred to make SIDM halos match halo observations, has not previously been identified. Further study of this regime is warranted.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.53.2-53.2
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• 2011

We combine the physics of the ellipsoidal collapse model with the excursion set theory to study the shapes of dark matter halos. In particular, we develop an analytic approximation to the nonlinear evolution that is more accurate than the Zeldovich approximation; we introduce a planar representation of halo axis ratios, which allows a concise and intuitive description of the dynamics of collapsing regions and allows one to relate the final shape of a halo to its initial shape; we provide simple physical explanations for some empirical fitting formulae obtained from numerical studies. Comparison with simulations is challenging, as there is no agreement about how to define a non-spherical gravitationally bound object. Nevertheless, we find that our model matches the conditional minor-to-intermediate axis ratio distribution rather well, although it disagrees with the numerical results in reproducing the minor-to-major axis ratio distribution. In particular, the mass dependence of the minor-to-major axis distribution appears to be the opposite to what is found in many previous numerical studies, where low-mass halos are preferentially more spherical than high-mass halos. In our model, the high-mass halos are predicted to be more spherical, consistent with results based on a more recent and elaborate halo finding algorithm, and with observations of the mass dependence of the shapes of early-type galaxies. We suggest that some of the disagreement with some previous numerical studies may be alleviated if we consider only isolated halos.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.35.2-35.2
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• 2021

Blue straggler stars (BSs) are "rejuvenated" main sequence stars first recognized by Allan Sandage from his observation of the prominent northern globular cluster M3 in the year of 1953. BSs are now known to be present in diverse stellar environments including open clusters, globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, and even the field populations of the Milky Way. This makes them a very useful tool in a wide range of astrophysical applications: Particularly BSs are considered to have a crucial role in the evolution of stellar clusters because they affect on the dynamics, the binary population, and the history of the stellar evolution of the cluster they belong to. Here we report a part of the preliminary results from our ongoing research on the BSs in the two metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Hodge 11 and NGC1466. Using the high precision multi-band images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we extract time-series photometry to search for the signal of periodic variations in the luminosity of the BSs. Our preliminary results confirm that several BSs are intrinsic "short period (0.05 < P < 0.25 days)" variable stars with either pulsating or eclipsing types. We will discuss our investigation on the properties of those variable BS candidates in the context of the formation channels of these exotic main sequence stars, and their roles in the dynamical evolution of the host star clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.70.2-71
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• 2021

We examine gas kinematics and star formation activities of NGC 6822, a gas-rich dwarf irregular galaxy in the Local Group at a distance of ~490 kpc. We perform profile decomposition of all the line-of-sight (LOS) HI velocity profiles of the high-resolution (42.4" × 12" spatial; 1.6 km/s spectral) HI data cube of the galaxy, taken with the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). To this end, we use a novel tool based on Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques, the so-called BAYGAUD, which allows us to decompose a velocity profile into an optimal number of Gaussian components in a quantitative manner. We group all the decomposed components into bulk-narrow, bulk-broad, and non-bulk gas components classified with respect to their velocity dispersions and the amounts of velocity offset from the global kinematics, respectively. Using the surface densities and velocity dispersions of the kinematically decomposed HI gas maps together with the rotation curve of NGC 6822, we derive Toomre-Q parameters for individual regions of the galaxy which quantify the level of local gravitational instability of the gaseous disk. We also measure the local star formation rate (SFR) of the corresponding regions in the galaxy by combining GALEX Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and WISE 22㎛ images. We then relate the gas and SFR surface densities in order to investigate the local Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) law of gravitationally unstable regions which are selected from the Toomre Q analysis. Of the three groups, the bulk-narrow, bulk-broad and non-bulk gas components, we find that the lower Toomre-Q values the bulk-narrow gas components have, the more consistent with the linear extension of the K-S law derived from molecular hydrogen (H2) observations.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.199-203
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• 2004

The gas response to a proposed spiral stellar pattern for our Galaxy is presented here as calculated via 2D hydrodynamic calculations utilizing the ZEUS code in the disk plane. The locus is that found by Drimmel (2000) from emission profiles in the K band and at 240 ${\mu}m$. The self-consistency of the stellar spiral pattern was studied in previous work (see Martos et al. 2004). It is a sensitive function of the pattern rotation speed, $\Omega$p, among other parameters which include the mass in the spiral and its pitch angle. Here we further discuss the complex gaseous response found there for plausible values of $\Omega$p in our Galaxy, and argue that its value must be close to $20 km s^{-l}\;kpc^{-1}$ from the strong self-consistency criterion and other recent, independent studies which depend on such parameter. However, other values of $\Omega$p that have been used in the literature are explored to study the gas response to the stellar (K band) 2-armed pattern. For our best fit values, the gaseous response to the 2-armed pattern displayed in the K band is a four-armed pattern with complex features in the interarm regions. This response resembles the optical arms observed in the Milky Way and other galaxies with the smooth underlying two-armed pattern of the old stellar disk populations in our interpretation. The complex gaseous response appears to be related to resonances in stellar orbits. Among them, the 4:1 resonance is paramount for the axisymmetric Galactic model employed, and the set of parameters explored. In the regime seemingly proper to our Galaxy, the spiral forcing appears to be marginally strong in the sense that the 4:1 resonance terminates the stellar pattern, despite its relatively low amplitude. In current work underway, the response for low values of $\Omega$p tends to remove most of the rich structure found for the optimal self-consistent model and the gaseous pattern is ring-like. For higher values than the optimal, more features and a multi-arm structure appears.