• 천문학회보
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• 제39권2호
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• pp.113.1-113.1
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• 2014

We propose a three-year Key Science Program (KSP) consisting of VLBI monitoring observations and single dish (SD) rapid response observations (RRO). The VLBI monitoring observations are comprised of ten 24-hr observations per year (every month) of about 30 gamma-ray brigt active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with Korea VLBI Network (KVN) at 22, 43, 86, and 129 GHz. The SD RROs may consist of twelve 7-hr observations per source (every week for 3 months after triggering) of gamma-ray flaring sources with two KVN SD telescopes at 22, 43, and 86 GHz in dual polarization. We expect one or two sources per year for the SD RROs. Gamma-ray flares of AGNs are known to be occured in innermost regions of relativistic jets which radiate in whole ranges of electromagnetic spectra due to synchrotron radiation, syschrotron self absorption, inverse-compton scttering, doppler boosting etc. Possible explanations of the gamma-ray flares in AGNs are a) shocks-in-jets propagating within jet flow and b) bending of the whole jets. For both cases, we should expect changes in polarization, luminosity, particle distribution, and structures of jets at mas-scale. The multifrequency simultaneous VLBI/SD observations with KVN are the best tool for detecting such changes correlated with gamma-ray flares. This KSP proposal aims to answer the fundamental questions about the basic nature of the flares of AGNs.

• 천문학회보
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• 제41권2호
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• pp.32.2-32.2
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• 2016

We present the catalog of the KVN Calibrator Survey (KVNCS). This first part of the KVNCS is a single dish radio survey conducted at 22 (K band) and 43 GHz (Q band) simultaneously using the Korean VLBI Network (KVN) from 2009 to 2011. A total 2045 sources selected from the VLBA Calibrator Survey (VCS) with an extrapolated flux limit of 100 mJy at K band. The KVNCS contains 1533 sources in the K band with a flux limit of 70 mJy and 553 sources in the Q band with a flux limit of 120 mJy; it covers the whole sky down to -32. ${\circ}$ 5 in declination. Five hundred thirteen sources were detected in the K and Q bands, simultaneously; ~76% of them are flat-spectrum sources ($-0.5{\leq}{\alpha}{\leq}0.5$). From the flux-flux relationship, we anticipated that the most of the radiation of many of the sources comes from the compact components. Therefore, the sources listed in the KVNCS are strong candidates for high frequency VLBI calibrators.

• 천문학회보
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• 제37권1호
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• pp.66.1-66.1
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• 2012

We have developed superconducting mixer receivers for 129 GHz VLBI observation in Korean VLBI Network(KVN). The developed mixer has a radial waveguide probe with simple transmission line LC transformer as a tuning circuit to its 5 series-connected junctions, which can have 125-165 GHz as operation RF frequency. For IF signal path a high impedance quarter-wavelength line connects the probe to one end of symmetric RF chokes. DSB receiver noise of the mixer was about 40 K over 4-6 GHz IF band whereas we achieved about uncorrected SSB noise temperature of 70 K and better than 10 dB IRR in 2SB configuration with 8-10 GHz IF band. Insert-type receiver cartridges using the mixers have been assembled for all three KVN stations. On-site performance summary in commissioning phase is presented.

• 천문학회지
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• 제52권2호
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• pp.31-40
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• 2019

A long standing problem in the study of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) is that the observed VLBI core is in fact a blending of the actual AGN core (classically defined by the ${\tau}=1$ surface) and the upstream regions of the jet or optically thin flows. This blending may cause some biases in the observables of the core, such as its flux density, size or brightness temperature, which may lead to misleading interpretation of the derived quantities and physics. We study the effects of such blending under the view of the Korean VLBI Network (KVN) for a sample of AGNs at 43 GHz by comparing their observed properties with observations obtained using the Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA). Our results suggest that the observed core sizes are a factor ~ 11 larger than these of VLBA, which is similar to the factor expected by considering the different resolutions of the two facilities. We suggest the use of this factor to consider blending effects in KVN measurements. Other parameters, such as flux density or brightness temperature, seem to possess a more complicated dependence.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제27권3호
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• pp.239-244
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• 2010

A simulation for the design of a $90^{\circ}$ differential phase shifter aimed toward Korean VLBI Network (KVN) 129 GHz band polarizer is described in this paper. A dual-circular polarizer for KVN 129 GHz band consists of a $90^{\circ}$ differential phase shifter and an orthomode transducer. The differential phase shifter is made up of a square waveguide with two opposite walls loaded with corrugations. Three-dimensional electromagnetic simulation has been performed to predict the $90^{\circ}$ differential phase shifter's characteristics. The simulation for the differential phase shifter shows that the phase shift is $90^{\circ}{\pm}3.3^{\circ}$ across 108-160 GHz and the return losses of two orthogonal modes are better than -30 dB within the design frequency band. According to the simulation results the calculated performance is quite encouraging for KVN 129 GHz band application.

• 천문학회보
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• 제39권1호
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• pp.52.1-52.1
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• 2014

Radio pulsars are highly magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit synchrotron radiation along the magnetic axes at their spin frequencies. Traditionally, pulsar observations have been done at low frequencies (MHz up to a few GHz), since radio pulsar spectrum is known to a power-law with a steep negative spectral index. More recently, high-frequency pulsar observations (several GHz and above) have been made as a broadband spectrometer and fast computers became available. High-frequency pulsar observations will provide information on radio emission mechanism of pulsars in the vicinity of the neutron star surface. There is also huge interest from gravitational-wave and astrophysics community to find a pulsar in the center of our Galaxy. The Korean VLBI Network has three 21-m single dishes in the Korean peninsula. Using KVN's lowest observational frequency of 22-GHz, we performed test observations with the KVN targeting a few selected known, bright pulsars. In addition, we have been developing pulsar pipelines that can be utilized with a VLBI facility using Mark-V. We present a brief introduction of radio pulsars and show data obtained with the KVN.

• 천문학회보
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• 제39권2호
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• pp.113.2-113.2
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• 2014

Methanol masers are divided into two classes, I and II. Class II methanol masers trace the disk-outflow systems of massive young stellar objects (YSOs), while class I methanol masers appear to trace the interaction regions of outflows with the ambient molecular gas. Class II masers have been extensively studied by single dishes, connected arrays, and VLBIs. Meanwhile, class I masers have been much less studied. They have not been detected by any VLBI facility. Thus they have been believed to have more extended structures than class II masers. We made fringe surveys of 44GHz class I methanol maser emission towards more than 150 massive YSOs with flux densities >10 Jy using the Korean VLBI Network (KVN), and detected fringes in ~10% of the sources. We performed follow-up imaging observations of the detected maser sources with KVN and KVN+VERA (KaVA). The observations aim to investigate the distribution and kinematics of 44GHz methanol maser features in each source at milli-arcsecond resolutions, and to understand what they trace. In this talk we will present the fringe survey and imaging results and our plans for further studies. Additionally, we will also introduce the preliminary results of single-dish polarization observations of water and class I methanol masers.

• 천문학회보
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• 제41권2호
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• pp.36.2-36.2
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• 2016

In mm-VLBI, the quality of observation data is largely affected by atmospheric effect. The most challenging matter is that the phase of correlator output fluctuates rapidly resulting from a variation of atmospheric propagation delay. Consequently, it is demanding to achieve high Signal-to-Noise ratio by integrating data in time domain before calibrating atmospheric delay. However, Korean VLBI Network (KVN) has a unique system to make a 4-frequency (22/43/86/129 GHz) simultaneous observation in mm-wavelength and Frequency Phase Transfer (FPT) calibration technique has effectively removed atmospheric delay in the simultaneous multi-frequency observation of the KVN. For astrometric and astrophysical studies, we evaluated the FPT performance of KVN in various observing conditions. Using the total 38 bright AGNs, we have compared atmospheric conditions such as ground-based weather information, system temperature, atmospheric delay with the calibration results of FPT at 22/43/86/129 GHz during the five experiments in 2013, and quantified its performance in terms of coherence function and Allan variance. We present the analysis result of the relation between the FPT performance and observing conditions.

• 천문학회보
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• 제43권1호
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• pp.69.3-69.3
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• 2018

한국우주전파관측망(KVN, Korean VLBI Network)의 86 GHz 대역 수신기는 VLBI에서 주로 관측하는 85-95 GHz 주파수 대역에서 동작하도록 설계, 제작되었다. UMASS(University of Massachusetts) 대학으로부터 도입된 수신기의 대역폭을 84-116 GHz로 확장하기 위해 2017년도부터 수신기 설계, 부품 구입 등을 진행하고 있다.기존 수신기의 대역폭을 확장하기 위해, 협대역 주파수 변환기의 설계를 변경해야 한다. 주파수 변환기는 일반적으로 사용되는 SSB(Single Side Band) Mixer를 사용하지 않았다. 그 대신에 20 dB 이상의 높은 이미지 제거율을 갖도록 HPF(High Pass Filter)와 LPF(Low Pass Filter)를 사용하여 RF 주파수를 84-100 GHz와 100-116 GHz로 나눈 후 주파수 변환토록 하였다. 사용된 Filter의 특성을 이용, 이미지 대역 신호를 수 십 dB 이상 제거할 수 있다. RF 단에서의 신호 분리로 인해 수신기 등가잡음 온도는 수 K 정도 증가한다. 2017년에 제안된 주파수 변환기를 상온에서 구성하여 그 가능성을 검증하였고, 2018년 9월 까지 KVN W-band 수신기 1 대의 업그레이드를 진행할 것이다. 2019년까지 KVN 3 사이트의 W-band 수신기 주파수 확장을 완료할 계획이다.

• 천문학논총
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.453-455
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• 2015

In this paper we introduce the Plasma Physics of Active Galactic Nuclei project, which is an ongoing experiment with Korean VLBI Network (KVN) and KVN and VERA Array (KaVA) to study multi-frequency polarimetric properties on parsec scales of active galaxies. The goal of the project is to improve our understanding of fundamental jet physics, especially evolution of the relativistic outflow coupled with the large-scale magnetic field. We selected six radio-loud AGN as our targets. So far we (i) detected resolved emissions regions at 86 and 129 GHz on VLBI scales, (ii) constructed 2D spectral index maps of the outflows, and (iii) found polarizations at 22 and 43 GHz for a few targets. Here we present spectral index distributions of 3C 120 between 22 and 43 GHz and a linear polarization map of BL Lac at 43 GHz obtained with KVN.