Searching for Variability in the Globular Cluster Messier 4
Time-series data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope of a field six core radii (~5') from the center of the globular cluster Messier 4, and covering a period of about 10 weeks in early 2001, have been analyzed in search of variable objects. Various criteria were employed to select candidate variable stars. Period searches were performed on the selected candidates using phase dispersion minimization (PDM). The reliability of the PDM search results was tested using synthetic light curves of eclipsing binary stars and sinusoidal light curves of different periods. Results from this analysis showed that there are probably no eclipsing binary stars or periodic variables in our field with periods on the order of a few hours to a few days, down to limiting magnitudes of V ~ 25 and I ~ 24, which is consistent with the absence of contact binaries such as W Ursae Majoris systems. However, one candidate variable star does show an increase in brightness of ~0.1 mag in both bandpasses, which seems to last for a few days. Possible explanations concerning the nature of this object include a binary system with a white dwarf primary and a low-mass main-sequence secondary or a BY Draconis variable star. We are able to set an upper limit to the observed fraction of photometric variability in this data set of 0.05%.

title: Testing LMC Microlensing Scenarios: The Discrimination Power of the SuperMACHO Microlensing Survey
abstract: Characterizing the nature and spatial distribution of the lensing objects that produce the previously measured microlensing optical depth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) remains an open problem. We present an appraisal of the ability of the SuperMACHO Project, a next-generation microlensing survey directed toward the LMC, to discriminate between various proposed lensing populations. We consider two scenarios: lensing by a uniform foreground screen of objects and self-lensing by LMC stars. The optical depth for screen lensing is essentially constant across the face of the LMC, whereas the optical depth for self-lensing shows a strong spatial dependence. We have carried out extensive simulations, based on data obtained during the first year of the project, to assess the SuperMACHO survey's ability to discriminate between these two scenarios. In our simulations we predict the expected number of observed microlensing events for various LMC models for each of our fields by adding artificial stars to the images and estimating the spatial and temporal efficiency of detecting microlensing events using Monte Carlo methods. We find that the event rate itself shows significant sensitivity to the choice of the LMC luminosity function, limiting the conclusions that can be drawn from the absolute rate. If instead we determine the differential event rate across the LMC, we will decrease the impact of these systematic biases and render our conclusions more robust. With this approach the SuperMACHO Project should be able to distinguish between the two categories of lens populations. This will provide important constraints on the nature of the lensing objects and their contributions to the Galactic dark matter halo.

title: Color and Variability Characteristics of Point Sources in the Faint Sky Variability Survey
abstract: We present an analysis of the color and variability characteristics for point sources in the Faint Sky Variability Survey (FSVS). The FSVS cataloged ~23 deg2 in BVI filters from ~16 to 24 mag to investigate variability in faint sources at moderate-to-high Galactic latitudes. Point-source completeness is found to be >83% for a selected representative sample (V = 17.5-22.0 mag, B - V = 0.0-1.5) containing both photometric B, V detections and 80% of the time-sampled V data available compared to a basic internal source completeness of 99%. Multiepoch (10-30) observations in V spanning minutes to years modeled by light-curve simulations reveal amplitude sensitivities to ~0.015-0.075 mag over a representative V = 18-22 mag range. Periodicity determinations appear viable to timescales of order 1 day or less using the most sampled fields (~30 epochs). The fraction of point sources is found to be generally variable at 5%-8% over V = 17.5-22.0 mag. For V brighter than 19 mag, the variable population is dominated by low-amplitude (<0.05 mag) and blue (B - V < 0.35) sources, possibly representing a population of γ Doradus stars. Overall, the dominant population of variable sources are bluer than B - V = 0.65 and have main-sequence colors, likely reflecting larger populations of RR Lyrae, SX Phe, γ Doradus, and W UMa variables.

title: The Faint Sky Variability Survey — I. Goals and data reduction process
abstract: The Faint Sky Variability Survey is aimed at finding photometric and/or astrometric variable objects in the brightness range between ∼16th and ∼24th mag on time-scales between tens of minutes and years with photometric precisions ranging from 3 millimag for the brightest to 0.2 mag for the faintest objects. An area of ∼23 deg 2 , located at mid and high Galactic latitudes, has been covered using the Wide Field Camera on the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma. Here we describe the main goals of the Faint Sky Variability Survey and the data reduction process.

title: PS1-10afx at z= 1.388: Pan-STARRS1 Discovery of a New Type of Superluminous Supernova
abstract: We present the Pan-STARRS1 discovery of PS1-10afx, a unique hydrogen-deficient superluminous supernova (SLSN) at redshift z = 1.388. The light curve peaked at z P1 = 21.7 mag, making PS1-10afx comparable to the most luminous known SNe, with Mu = –22.3 mag. Our extensive optical and near-infrared observations indicate that the bolometric light curve of PS1-10afx rose on the unusually fast timescale of ~12 days to the extraordinary peak luminosity of 4.1 × 1044 erg s–1 (M bol = –22.8 mag) and subsequently faded rapidly. Equally important, the spectral energy distribution is unusually red for an SLSN, with a color temperature of ~6800 K near maximum light, in contrast to previous hydrogen-poor SLSNe, which are bright in the ultraviolet (UV). The spectra more closely resemble those of a normal SN Ic than any known SLSN, with a photospheric velocity of ~11, 000 km s–1 and evidence for line blanketing in the rest-frame UV. Despite the fast rise, these parameters imply a very large emitting radius ( 5 × 1015 cm). We demonstrate that no existing theoretical model can satisfactorily explain this combination of properties: (1) a nickel-powered light curve cannot match the combination of high peak luminosity with the fast timescale; (2) models powered by the spindown energy of a rapidly rotating magnetar predict significantly hotter and faster ejecta; and (3) models invoking shock breakout through a dense circumstellar medium cannot explain the observed spectra or color evolution. The host galaxy is well detected in pre-explosion imaging with a luminosity near L*, a star formation rate of ~15 M ☉ yr–1, and is fairly massive (~2 × 1010 M ☉), with a stellar population age of ~108 yr, also in contrast to the young dwarf hosts of known hydrogen-poor SLSNe. PS1-10afx is distinct from known examples of SLSNe in its spectra, colors, light-curve shape, and host galaxy properties, suggesting that it resulted from a different channel than other hydrogen-poor SLSNe.

title: Results from a low-energy analysis of the CDMS II germanium data.
abstract: We report results from a reanalysis of data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Data taken between October 2006 and September 2008 using eight germanium detectors are reanalyzed with a lowered, 2 keV recoil-energy threshold, to give increased sensitivity to interactions from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with masses below ∼10  GeV/c(2). This analysis provides stronger constraints than previous CDMS II results for WIMP masses below 9  GeV/c(2) and excludes parameter space associated with possible low-mass WIMP signals from the DAMA/LIBRA and CoGeNT experiments.

title: Nuclear Structure Information from Pion Absorption Experiments
abstract: The study of the absorption of π mesons by complex nuclei is particularly suited to reveal interesting and new information on nuclear structure properties. The reason for this is that a large energy, i.e. 140 MeV, and very little momentum are released and have to be absorbed by the nucleus. This is only possible via the high momentum components of the nucleon wave functions, or in r-space, by the short-range correlations between two nucleons. Presumably they arise from the short range part of the nucleonnucleon interaction which causes a modification of the currently most successful model, the independent particle model. These effects in practice cannot be taken into account by a straightforward application of shell model techniques.A more practicable way is the use of correlqed Jastrow functions 1 ; the correlated many-body wave function, \(\overset{\wedge }{\mathop{\Psi }}\,\), is given by 
 
$$\overset{\wedge }{\mathop{\Psi }}\,(1,2,\ldots ,A)=\Psi (1,2,\ldots ,A)\Pi f({{r}_{ik}})$$ 
 
where Ψ(1,2,...,A) is the shell model wave function, e.g. a Slater determinant of independent particle wave functions, and f(ik) is the correlation factor. In order to study the short range Correlation effects, it is useful to expand f(r) in a Fourier-Besselseries:

title: Infrared behavior of vertex functions in d-dimensional Yang-Mills theory

title: Dark Matter Search Results from the CDMS II Experiment
abstract: News from the Dark Side? Dark matter is thought to represent 85% of all matter in the universe and to have been responsible for the formation of structure in the early universe, but its nature is still a mystery. Ahmed et al. (p. 1619, published online 11 February; see the Perspective by Lang) describe the results from the completed Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment, which searched for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). Two candidate signals were observed, whereas only one background event was expected. The probability of having two or more events from the background would have been 23%. The results of this analysis cannot be interpreted with confidence as evidence for WIMP interactions, but, at the same time, neither event can be ruled out as representing signal. Details of possible, but unlikely, detection events produced by dark matter are reported. Astrophysical observations indicate that dark matter constitutes most of the mass in our universe, but its nature remains unknown. Over the past decade, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment has provided world-leading sensitivity for the direct detection of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. The final exposure of our low-temperature germanium particle detectors at the Soudan Underground Laboratory yielded two candidate events, with an expected background of 0.9 ± 0.2 events. This is not statistically significant evidence for a WIMP signal. The combined CDMS II data place the strongest constraints on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross section for a wide range of WIMP masses and exclude new parameter space in inelastic dark matter models.

title: Infrared singularities in Landau gauge Yang-Mills theory
abstract: We present a more detailed picture of the infrared regime of Landau-gauge Yang-Mills theory. This is done within a novel framework that allows one to take into account the influence of finite scales within an infrared power counting analysis. We find that there are two qualitatively different infrared fixed points of the full system of Dyson-Schwinger equations. The first extends the known scaling solution, where the ghost dynamics is dominant and gluon propagation is strongly suppressed. It features in addition to the strong divergences of gluonic vertex functions in the previously considered uniform scaling limit, when all external momenta tend to zero, also weaker kinematic divergences, when only some of the external momenta vanish. The second solution represents the recently proposed decoupling scenario where the gluons become massive and the ghosts remain bare. In this case we find that none of the vertex functions is enhanced, so that the infrared dynamics is entirely suppressed. Our analysis also provides a strict argument why the Landau-gauge gluon dressing function cannot be infrared divergent.