STATUS OF THE FIBER LINK STABILIZATION UNITS AT FLASH

Abstract State-of-the-art X-ray photon science with modern freeelectron lasers (FEL) like FLASH (free-electron laser in Hamburg) and the upcoming European X-ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (XFEL) requires timing with femtosecond accuracy. For this purpose a sophisticated pulsed optical synchronization system distributes precise timing via lengthstabilized fiber links throughout the entire FEL. Stations to be synchronized comprise bunch arrival time monitors (BAM's), RF stations and optical cross-correlators (OXC) for external lasers. The different requirements of all those stations have to be met by one optical link stabilization unit (LSU) design, compensating drifts and jitter in the distribution system down to a fs-level. Five years of LSU operation at FLASH have led to numerous enhancements resulting in an elaborate system. This paper presents these enhancements, their impact on synchronization performance and the latest state of the LSUs

An Isolated Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected Through Astrometric Microlensing

We report the first unambiguous detection and mass measurement of an isolated stellar-mass black hole (BH). We used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to carry out precise astrometry of the source star of the long-duration (t_E ~ 270 days), high-magnification microlensing event MOA-2011-BLG-191/OGLE-2011-BLG-0462, in the direction of the Galactic bulge. HST imaging, conducted at eight epochs over an interval of six years, reveals a clear relativistic astrometric deflection of the background star's apparent position. Ground-based photometry shows a parallactic signature of the effect of the Earth's motion on the microlensing light curve. Combining the HST astrometry with the ground-based light curve and the derived parallax, we obtain a lens mass of 7.1 +/- 1.3 M_Sun and a distance of 1.58 +/- 0.18 kpc. We show that the lens emits no detectable light, which, along with having a mass higher than is possible for a white dwarf or neutron star, confirms its BH nature. Our analysis also provides an absolute proper motion for the BH. The proper motion is offset from the mean motion of Galactic-disk stars at similar distances by an amount corresponding to a transverse space velocity of ~45 km/s, suggesting that the BH received a modest natal 'kick' from its supernova explosion. Previous mass determinations for stellar-mass BHs have come from radial-velocity measurements of Galactic X-ray binaries, and from gravitational radiation emitted by merging BHs in binary systems in external galaxies. Our mass measurement is the first ever for an isolated stellar-mass BH using any technique