Are Stars with Planets Polluted?

We compare the metallicities of stars with radial velocity planets to the metallicity of a sample of field dwarfs. We confirm recent work indicating that the stars-with-planet sample as a whole is iron rich. However, the lowest mass stars tend to be iron poor, with several having [Fe/H]<-0.2, demonstrating that high metallicity is not required for the formation of short period Jupiter-mass planets. We show that the average [Fe/H] increases with increasing stellar mass (for masses below 1.25 solar masses) in both samples, but that the increase is much more rapid in the stars-with-planet sample. The variation of metallicity with stellar age also differs between the two samples. We examine possible selection effects related to variations in the sensitivity of radial velocity surveys with stellar mass and metallicity, and identify a color cutoff (B-V>0.48) that contributes to but does not explain the mass-metallicity trend in the stars-with-planets sample. We use Monte Carlo models to show that adding an average of 6.5 Earth masses of iron to each star can explain both the mass-metallicity and the age-metallicity relations of the stars-with-planets sample. However, for at least one star, HD 38529, there is good evidence that the bulk metallicity is high. We conclude that the observed metallicities and metallicity trends are the result of the interaction of three effects; accretion of about 6 Earth masses of iron rich material, selection effects, and in some cases, high intrinsic metallicity.Comment: 19 pages 11 figure

R-Band Imaging of Fields Around 1<z<2 Radiogalaxies

We have taken deep $R$-band images of fields around five radiogalaxies: 0956+47, 1217+36, 3C256, 3C324 and 3C294 with $1<z<2$ . 0956+47 is found to show a double nucleus. Our data on 1217+36 suggest the revision of its classification as a radiogalaxy. We found a statistically significant excess of bright ($19.5<R<22$) galaxies on scales of 2 arcmin around the radiogalaxies (which have $R \approx 21.4$) in our sample. The excess has been determined empirically to be at $\gtrsim 99.5\%$ level. It is remarkable that this excess is not present for $22<R<23.75$ galaxies within the same area, suggesting that the excess is not physically associated to the galaxies but due to intervening groups and then related to gravitational lensing.Comment: 20 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript including tables. Figures available upon request. To appear in the March 1995 issue of The Astronomical Journa

Are optically-selected QSO catalogs biased ?

A thorough study of QSO-galaxy correlations has been done on a region close to the North Galactic Pole using a complete subsample of the optically selected CFHT/MMT QSO survey and the galaxy catalog of Odewahn and Aldering (1995). Although a positive correlation between bright QSOs and galaxies is expected because of the magnification bias effect, none is detected. On the contrary, there is a significant (>99.6%) anticorrelation between z<1.6 QSOs and red galaxies on rather large angular distances. This anticorrelation is much less pronounced for high redshift z>1.6 QSOs, which seems to exclude dust as a cause of the QSO underdensity. This result suggests that the selection process employed in the CFHT/MMT QSO survey is losing up to 50% of low redshift z<1.6 QSOs in regions of high galaxy density. The incompleteness in the whole z<1.6 QSO sample may reach 10% and have important consequences in the estimation of QSO evolution and the QSO autocorrelation function.Comment: 17 pages LaTeX (aasms4), plus 6 EPS figures. To be published in the Astronomical Journa

Global analysis of the negative parity non-strange baryons in the 1/Nc expansion

A global study of the negative parity non-strange baryon observables is performed in the frame- work of the 1/Nc expansion. Masses, partial decay widths and photo-couplings are simultaneously analyzed. A main objective is to determine the composition of the spin 1/2 and 3/2 nucleon states, which come in pairs and involve two mixing angles which can be determined and tested for consistency by the mentioned observables. The issue of the assignment of those nucleon states to the broken SU(4) x O(3) mixed-symmetry multiplet is studied in detail, with the conclusion that the assignment made in the old studies based on the non-relativistic quark model is the preferred one. In addition, the analysis involves an update of the input data with respect to previous works.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figure

N electrons in a quantum dot: Two-point Pade approximants

We present analytic estimates for the energy levels of N electrons (N = 2 - 5) in a two-dimensional parabolic quantum dot. A magnetic field is applied perpendicularly to the confinement plane. The relevant scaled energy is shown to be a smooth function of the parameter \beta=(effective Rydberg/effective dot energy)^{1/6}. Two-point Pade approximants are obtained from the series expansions of the energy near the oscillator ($\beta\to 0$) and Wigner ($\beta\to\infty$) limits. The approximants are expected to work with an error not greater than 2.5% in the entire interval $0\le\beta < \infty$.Comment: 27 pages. LaTeX. 6 figures not include