Tilted Pulse-Front Phase-matching in Three Dimensions:Overcoming The Cherenkov Angle Restrictions

We consider the non-linear generation of THz with tilted pulse-fronts in three dimensions and show that, contrary to the widely held expectations, coherent phase matching can be obtained for pulse-front tilt angles other the Cherenkov angle

Discovery of an Unusual Dwarf Galaxy in the Outskirts of the Milky Way

In this Letter, we announce the discovery of a new dwarf galaxy, Leo T, in the Local Group. It was found as a stellar overdensity in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5). The color-magnitude diagram of Leo T shows two well-defined features, which we interpret as a red giant branch and a sequence of young, massive stars. As judged from fits to the color-magnitude diagram, it lies at a distance of about 420 kpc and has an intermediate-age stellar population with a metallicity of [Fe/H]= -1.6, together with a young population of blue stars of age of 200 Myr. There is a compact cloud of neutral hydrogen with mass roughly 10^5 solar masses and radial velocity 35 km/s coincident with the object visible in the HIPASS channel maps. Leo T is the smallest, lowest luminosity galaxy found to date with recent star-formation. It appears to be a transition object similar to, but much lower luminosity than, the Phoenix dwarf.Comment: Ap J (Letters) in press, the subject of an SDSS press release toda

Probing the Ionizing Continuum of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies. I.Observational Results

We present optical spectra and emission-line ratios of 12 Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies that we observed to study the ionizing EUV continuum. A common feature in the EUV continuum of active galactic nuclei is the big blue bump (BBB), generally associated with thermal accretion disk emission. While Galactic absorption prevents direct access to the EUV range, it can be mapped by measuring the strength of a variety of forbidden optical emission lines that respond to different EUV continuum regions. We find that narrow emission-line ratios involving [OII]3727, Hbeta, [OIII]5007, [OI]6300, Halpha,[NII]6583, and [SII]6716,6731 indicate no significant difference between NLS1s and Broad-Line Seyfert 1 (BLS1) galaxies, which suggests that the spectral energy distributions of their ionizing EUV - soft X-ray continua are similar. The relative strength of important forbidden high ionization lines like [NeV]3426 compared to HeII4686 and the relative strength of [FeX]6374 appear to show the same range as in BLS1 galaxies. However, a trend of weaker F([OI]6300)/F(Halpha) emission-line ratios is indicated for NLS1s compared to BLS1s. To recover the broad emission-line profiles we used Gaussian components. This approach indicates that the broad Hbeta profile can be well described with a broad component (FWHM = 3275 +- 800 km/s) and an intermediate broad component (FWHM = 1200 +- 300 km/s). The width of the broad component is in the typical range of normal BLS1s. The emission-line flux that is associated with the broad component in these NLS1s amounts to at least 60% of the total flux. Thus it dominates the total line flux, similar to BLS1 galaxies.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures. accepted for publication in the Astrophys.Journa

Light and Motion in SDSS Stripe 82: The Catalogues

We present a new public archive of light-motion curves in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82, covering 99 deg in right ascension from RA = 20.7 h to 3.3 h and spanning 2.52 deg in declination from Dec = -1.26 to 1.26 deg, for a total sky area of ~249 sq deg. Stripe 82 has been repeatedly monitored in the u, g, r, i and z bands over a seven-year baseline. Objects are cross-matched between runs, taking into account the effects of any proper motion. The resulting catalogue contains almost 4 million light-motion curves of stellar objects and galaxies. The photometry are recalibrated to correct for varying photometric zeropoints, achieving ~20 mmag and ~30 mmag root-mean-square (RMS) accuracy down to 18 mag in the g, r, i and z bands for point sources and extended sources, respectively. The astrometry are recalibrated to correct for inherent systematic errors in the SDSS astrometric solutions, achieving ~32 mas and ~35 mas RMS accuracy down to 18 mag for point sources and extended sources, respectively. For each light-motion curve, 229 photometric and astrometric quantities are derived and stored in a higher-level catalogue. On the photometric side, these include mean exponential and PSF magnitudes along with uncertainties, RMS scatter, chi^2 per degree of freedom, various magnitude distribution percentiles, object type (stellar or galaxy), and eclipse, Stetson and Vidrih variability indices. On the astrometric side, these quantities include mean positions, proper motions as well as their uncertainties and chi^2 per degree of freedom. The here presented light-motion curve catalogue is complete down to r~21.5 and is at present the deepest large-area photometric and astrometric variability catalogue available.Comment: MNRAS accepte

LOTIS, Super-LOTIS, SDSS and Tautenburg Observations of GRB 010921

We present multi-instrument optical observations of the High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE-2)/Interplanetary Network (IPN) error box of GRB 010921. This event was the first gamma ray burst (GRB) localized by HETE-2 which has resulted in the detection of an optical afterglow. In this paper we report the earliest known observations of the GRB010921 field, taken with the 0.11-m Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System (LOTIS) telescope, and the earliest known detection of the GRB010921 optical afterglow, using the 0.5-m Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Telescope (SDSS PT). Observations with the LOTIS telescope began during a routine sky patrol 52 minutes after the burst. Observations were made with the SDSS PT, the 0.6-m Super-LOTIS telescope, and the 1.34-m Tautenburg Schmidt telescope at 21.3, 21.8, and 37.5 hours after the GRB, respectively. In addition, the host galaxy was observed with the USNOFS 1.0-m telescope 56 days after the burst. We find that at later times (t > 1 day after the burst), the optical afterglow exhibited a power-law decline with a slope of $\alpha = 1.75 \pm 0.28$. However, our earliest observations show that this power-law decline can not have extended to early times (t < 0.035 day).Comment: AASTeX v5.x LaTeX 2e, 6 pages with 2 postscript figures, will be submitted to ApJ Letter