• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.2
• /
• pp.37.1-37.1
• /
• 2021

Observations suggest the star formation in nuclear rings of barred galaxies proceeds episodically in time and sometimes asymmetrically in space. Existing theories and numerical simulations suggest that the episodic star formation is perhaps due to either supernova feedback combined with fluid instabilities or time-varying mass inflow rate. However, it has been challenging to discern what dominates in shaping the star formation history because the effects of the inflow and feedback are blended in global simulations of nuclear rings. To understand their effects separately, we construct semi-global models of nuclear rings, which treat the mass inflow rate as a model parameter. By running simulations with the inflow rates kept constant or oscillating in time, we find that the star formation rate (SFR) of the rings varies coherently with the inflow rate, while the feedback is responsible only for stochastic fluctuations of the SFR within a factor of two. The feedback instead plays an important role in maintaining the vertical dynamical equilibrium and setting the depletion time. While the asymmetry in the inflow does not necessarily lead to the asymmetry in the star formation, we find that the rings undergo a transient period of lopsided star formation when the inflow rate of only one dust lane is suddenly increased.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.29.4-29.4
• /
• 2016

The relations between star formation and properties of molecular clouds are studied based on a sample of star forming regions in the Galactic Plane. Sources were selected by having radio recombination lines to provide identification of associated molecular clouds and dense clumps. Radio continuum and mid-infrared emission were used to determine star formation rates, while 13CO and submillimeter dust continuum emission were used to obtain masses of molecular and dense gas, respectively. We test whether total molecular gas or dense gas provides the best predictor of star formation rate. We also test two specific theoretical models, one relying on the molecular mass divided by the free-fall time, the other using the free-fall time divided by the crossing time. Neither is supported by the data. The data are also compared to those from nearby star forming regions and extragalactic data. The star formation "efficiency," defined as star formation rate divided by mass, spreads over a large range when the mass refers to molecular gas; the standard deviation of the log of the efficiency decreases by a factor of three when the mass of relatively dense molecular gas is used rather than the mass of all the molecular gas.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.51.2-51.2
• /
• 2021

Nuclear rings are sites of intense star formation at the center of barred spiral galaxies. A straightforward but unanswered question is what controls star formation rate (SFR) in nuclear rings. To understand how the ring SFR is related to mass inflow rate, gas content, and background gravitational field, we run a series of semi-global hydrodynamic simulations of nuclear rings, adopting the TIGRESS framework to handle radiative heating and cooling as well as star formation and supernova feedback. We find: 1) when the mass inflow rate is constant, star formation proceeds in a remarkably steady fashion, without showing any burst-quench behavior suggested in the literature; 2) the steady state SFR has a simple linear relationship with the inflow rate rather than the ring gas mass; 3) the midplane pressure balances the weight of the overlying gas and the SFR surface density is linearly correlated with the midplane pressure, consistent with the self-regulated star formation theory. We suggest that the ring SFR is controlled by the mass inflow rate in the first place, while the gas mass adjusts to the resulting feedback in the course of achieving the vertical dynamical equilibrium.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.1
• /
• pp.31.2-31.2
• /
• 2013

We use grid-based hydrodynamic simulations to study star formation in nuclear rings in barred galaxies. The gaseous medium is assumed to be infinitesimally thin, isothermal, and unmagnetized. To investigate various situations, we vary the total gas content in the bar regions and the bar growth time. We find that star formation rate (SFR) in a nuclear ring is determined by the mass inflow rate to the ring rather than the total gas mass in the ring. The SFR shows a strong primary burst and weak secondary bursts at early time, and declines to small values at late time. The primary burst is caused by the rapid gas infall to the ring due to the bar growth, with its duration and peak depending on the bar growth time. The secondary bursts result from re-infall of the ejected gas by star formation feedback of the primary burst. When the SFR is low, ages of young star clusters exhibit an azimuthal gradient along the ring since star formation takes place mostly near the contact points between the dust lanes and the nuclear ring. When the SFR is large, on the other hand, star formation is widely distributed throughout the whole length of the ring, with no apparent age gradient of star clusters. Regardless of SFR, star clusters have a positive radial age gradient, with younger clusters located closer to the ring, since the ring shrinks in size over time.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.51.1-51.1
• /
• 2021

Spiral arms greatly affect gas flows and star formation in disk galaxies. We use local 3D simulations of vertically-stratified, self-gravitating, gaseous disks under a stellar spiral potential to study the effects of spiral arms on galactic star formation as well as formation of gaseous spurs/feathers. We adopt the TIGRESS framework to handle radiative heating and cooling, star formation, and ensuing supernova (SN) feedback. We find that more than 90% of star formation takes place inside spiral arms. The global star formation rate (SFR) in models with spiral arms is enhanced by less than a factor of 2 compared to the no-arm counterpart. This supports the picture that spiral arms do not trigger star formation but rather redistribute star-forming regions. Correlated SN feedback produces interarm feathers in both magnetized and unmagnetized models. These feathers live short, have parallel magnetic fields along their length, and are bounded by SN feedback in the lateral direction, in contrast to instability-induced feathers formed in our previous isothermal simulations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.47.1-47.1
• /
• 2014

We examine the effect of environment on star formation activity of a sample of galaxy group catalogue given in Tempel et al.(2012) constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 8. In order to compare galaxies in different environment, we classify galaxies into two groups: galaxies in low density environment and galaxies in high density environment. After matching colors and apparent magnitudes of the galaxies, we are left with 5912 galaxies in each of the environment category. The fraction of star-forming galaxies in low-density environment is ~34%, higher than ~15% in high-density environment. Star-forming galaxies in low density environment have a higher average SFR value than those in high density environment. The bulge-to-disk ratio for galaxies in two different environment shows bimodal distribution. Regardless of the environment, we find galaxies with high star formation rate despite their red (g-r) color, for which the origin enhancing their star formation rate is investigated.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.49.1-49.1
• /
• 2015

Star formation in galaxies that lie in dense environment tends to increase as the redshift of the cluster increases. At z~1.4, the situation turns to be complex; some clusters still harbor galaxies with vigorous star formation, and others are populated with relatively old, massive galaxies. We present the result from narrow-band photometric study of the fields around the radio galaxy 6CE 1100+3505 at z=1.44. Deep H- and H-narrow band data have been obtained using CFHT/WIRCAM which cover the corresponding wavelengths for redshifted $H{\alpha}$. While the number of IRAC 3.6, and $4.5{\mu}m$ selected sources show clear excess within the central ~1Mpc area from the radio galaxy, number of galaxies identified to show excess in H-narrow band is very small. We discuss the possible integrated star formation rate in this overdense structure, and the implication to the evolution of cosmic star formation rate as a function of environment.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.55.2-55.2
• /
• 2013

We examine the effect of environment on star formation activity of a sample of a galaxy group catalogue constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS DR8) given in Tempel et al.(2012). As an environmental parameter, we use the richness of the galaxy group. According to this parameter, we select 6846 galaxies in dense environment and 297335 galaxies in low environment. By comparing the two samples, we identify the different relationship between star formation rate and stellar mass. In order to compare galaxies in different environment, we fixed other parameters(color, apparent magnitude), which can affect star formation efficiency except for stellar mass. Also, based on HI mass from the ALFALFA survey, we study the environmental dependence of Kennicutt-Schmidt law which show the correlation between star formation rate and gas content.

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

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.511-512
• /
• 2015

Star formation activities dominate the evolution of galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are believed to be old galaxies in the Hubble sequence, and elliptical galaxies at different evolution epochs might have different star formation activities and/or morphologies. We investigate the connection between star formation rates and the morphology of elliptical galaxies. With the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Galaxy Zoo, we select a sample of elliptical galaxies by morphology and consider their infrared emission as an index of star formation rate to study the relation between the star formation rates and their morphological properties, such as ellipticities. In addition, we select some nearby spiral galaxies with very low MIR emission to probe the mechanisms of these red spiral galaxies. We display our preliminary results and discuss their implication on the evolution of galaxies in this poster.