Astronomy Seminar Series
Chang-Goo Kim, Princeton University
Developing a theoretical understanding of star formation and galactic-scale winds from first principles is the major hurdle to build a truly predictive galaxy formation theory. Stars are born in the interstellar medium (ISM) as a consequence of the competition between gravity and turbulent, magnetic, and thermal pressure forces. At the same time, newly-born massive stars return copious amounts of energy to the ISM (so called stellar feedback), which is the major energy source heating and stirring the ISM and driving large scale outflows. I will present a recent breakthrough in developing first-principles simulations of the star-forming ISM that includes a self-consistent treatment of the ISM thermodynamical evolution in galactic disks by solving (radiation)magnetohydrodynamics with self-gravity, star formation, and feedback. In the TIGRESS (Three-phase ISM in Galaxies Resolving Evolution with Star formation and Supernova feedback) framework, we include key physical processes in a local, vertically-stratified, shearing-box (outer scale ~ kpc) with uniformly high resolution (~ pc). Our TIGRESS simulation suite covers a wide range of galactic conditions with each simulation run for enough time (> galactic rotation period) to provide self-consistently regulated ISM states, star formation rates, and multiphase outflow properties. I will explain how this set of simulations provides the perfect testbed to illuminate the emerging mutual correlations between SFR, outflow rates, and galactic properties.
Chang-Goo Kim is an associate research scholar at Princeton University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Western Ontario (CITA National Fellow), Princeton University, and the Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute (Flatiron Research Fellow). He obtained his PhD in 2011 at Seoul National University, Korea. His research interests center on physics of star formation and the interstellar medium as well as development, implementation, and application of state-of-the-art numerical methods for computational fluid dynamics. Recently, he developed a numerical framework to model the star-forming interstellar medium in galactic disks from first principles and provided physical understanding of fundamental relations between star formation, galactic winds, and galactic conditions, which represent the physical basis for galaxy formation and evolution.