Filling in the Gaps in the 4.85 GHz Sky

We describe a 4.85 GHz survey of bright, flat-spectrum radio sources conducted with the Effelsberg 100 m telescope in an attempt to improve the completeness of existing surveys, such as CRATES. We report the results of these observations and of follow-up 8.4 GHz observations with the VLA of a subset of the sample. We comment on the connection to the WMAP point source catalog and on the survey's effectiveness at supplementing the CRATES sky coverage.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Tables available in electronic form: http://astro.stanford.edu/gaps

On the properties of superconducting planar resonators at mK temperatures

Planar superconducting resonators are now being increasingly used at mK temperatures in a number of novel applications. They are also interesting devices in their own right since they allow us to probe the properties of both the superconductor and its environment. We have experimentally investigated three types of niobium resonators - including a lumped element design - fabricated on sapphire and SiO_2/Si substrates. They all exhibit a non-trivial temperature dependence of their centre frequency and quality factor. Our results shed new light on the interaction between the electromagnetic waves in the resonator and two-level fluctuators in the substrate.Comment: V2 includes some minor corrections/changes. Submitted to PR

Magnetic field tuning of coplanar waveguide resonators

We describe measurements on microwave coplanar resonators designed for quantum bit experiments. Resonators have been patterned onto sapphire and silicon substrates, and quality factors in excess of a million have been observed. The resonant frequency shows a high sensitivity to magnetic field applied perpendicular to the plane of the film, with a quadratic dependence for the fundamental, second and third harmonics. Frequency shift of hundreds of linewidths can be obtained.Comment: Accepted for publication in AP

A Statistical Description of AGN Jet Evolution from the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS)

A detailed analysis of the evolution of the properties of core-jet systems within the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS) is presented. We find a power-law relationship between jet intensity and width that suggests for the typical jet, little if any energy is lost as it moves away from its core. Using VLA images at 1.5 GHz, we have found evidence that parsec-scale jets tend to be aligned with the the direction of emission on kiloparsec scales. We also found that this alignment improves as the jets move farther from their cores on projected scales as small as ~50-100 pc. This suggests that realignment of jets on these projected scales is relatively common. We typically find a modest amount of bending (a change in jet position angle of ~5 deg.) on these scales, suggesting that this realignment may typically occur relatively gradually.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 20 pages, 8 figure

Optical Spectroscopy of Bright Fermi LAT Blazars

We report on HET and Palomar 5 m spectroscopy of recently identified $\gamma$-ray blazars in the {\it Fermi} LAT Bright Source List. These data provide identifications for 10 newly discovered $\gamma$-ray flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQ) and six new BL Lacs plus improved spectroscopy for six additional BL Lacs. We substantially improve the identification completeness of the bright LAT blazars and give new redshifts and $z$ constraints, new estimates of the black hole masses and new measurements of the optical SED.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap