Sub-Microarcsecond Astrometry and New Horizons in Relativistic Gravitational Physics

Attaining the limit of sub-microarcsecond optical resolution will completely revolutionize fundamental astrometry by merging it with relativistic gravitational physics. Beyond the sub-microarcsecond threshold, one will meet in the sky a new population of physical phenomena caused by primordial gravitational waves from early universe and/or different localized astronomical sources, space-time topological defects, moving gravitational lenses, time variability of gravitational fields of the solar system and binary stars, and many others. Adequate physical interpretation of these yet undetectable sub-microarcsecond phenomena can not be achieved on the ground of the "standard" post-Newtonian approach (PNA), which is valid only in the near-zone of astronomical objects having a time-dependent gravitational field. We describe a new, post-Minkowskian relativistic approach for modeling astrometric observations having sub-microarcsecond precision and briefly discuss the light-propagation effects caused by gravitational waves and other phenomena related to time-dependent gravitational fields. The domain of applicability of the PNA in relativistic space astrometry is explicitly outlined.Comment: 5 pages, the talk given at the IAU Colloquium 180 "Towards Models and Constants for Sub-Microarcsecond Astrometry", Washington DC, March 26 - April 2, 200

Spatial and temporal characteristics of electrically fixed holograms in photorefractive strontium-barium niobate

We report measurements of the holographic diffraction efficiency (HDE) of single photorefractive gratings fixed by an externally applied voltage pulse in Sr0.75Ba0.25Nb2O6. The polarization grating HDE and decay rate are strongly dependent on the grating spacing and also depend on the intensity of the light beams during the recording and erasing/reconstruction process. Knowledge of the dependence of the fixing process on spatial frequency may be useful for the creation of physical models of local polarization switching in ferroelectrics

Irreducible wavelet representations and ergodic automorphisms on solenoids

We focus on the irreducibility of wavelet representations. We present some connections between the following notions: covariant wavelet representations, ergodic shifts on solenoids, fixed points of transfer (Ruelle) operators and solutions of refinement equations. We investigate the irreducibility of the wavelet representations, in particular the representation associated to the Cantor set, introduced in \cite{DuJo06b}, and we present several equivalent formulations of the problem

Electrical fixing of photorefractive holograms in Sr0.75Ba0.25Nb2O6

Photorefractive holograms stored in Sr0.75Ba0.25Nb2O6 crystals are electrically fixed at room temperature. The fixed holograms can be read out directly or after a positive-voltage pulse is applied that can dramatically enhance the diffraction efficiency. Single gratings as well as images are recorded and fixed