Periodic radio variability in NRAO 530: phase dispersion minimization analysis
A periodicity analysis of the radio light curves of the blazar NRAO 530 at 14.5, 8.0, and 4.8 GHz is presented employing an improved phase dispersion minimization technique. The result, which shows two persistent periodic components of similar to 6 and similar to 10 yr at all three frequencies, is consistent with the results obtained with the Lomb-Scargle periodogram and weighted wavelet Z-transform algorithms. The reliability of the derived periodicities is confirmed by the Monte Carlo numerical simulations which show a high statistical confidence. (Quasi-)Periodic fluctuations of the radio luminosity of NRAO 530 might be associated with the oscillations of the accretion disk triggered by hydrodynamic instabilities of the accreted flow.

title: Confirming the 115.5-day periodicity in the X-ray light curve of ULX NGC 5408 X-1
abstract: The Swift/XRT light curve of the ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 5408 X-1 was re-analyzed with two new numerical approaches, the Weighted Wavelet Z-transform and CLEANest, and the results are different from previous studies. Both techniques detected a prominent periodicity with a time scale of 115.5 +/- 1.5 days, in excellent agreement with the detection of the same periodicity first reported by Strohmayer. Monte Carlo simulations were employed to test the statisitical confidence of the 115.5-day periodicity, yielding a statistical significance of >99.98% (or > 3.8 sigma). The robust detection of the 115.5-day quasi-periodic oscillations, if they are due to the orbital motion of the binary, would infer a mass of a few thousand M-circle dot for the central black hole, implying there is an intermediate-mass black hole in NGC 5408 X-1.

title: Multiple periodic oscillations in the radio light curves of NRAO 530
abstract: In this paper, the time series analysis method CLEANest is employed to search for characteristic periodicities in the radio light curves of the blazar NRAO 530 at 4.8, 8.0 and 14.5 GHz over a time baseline of three decades. Two prominent periodicities on time scales of ∼6.3 and ∼9.5 a are identified at all three frequencies, in agreement with previous results derived from different numerical techniques, confirming the multiplicity of the periodicities in NRAO 530. In addition to these two significant periods, there is also evidence of shorter-timescale periodicities of ∼5.0, ∼4.2, ∼3.4 and ∼2.8 a showing lower amplitude in the periodograms. The physical mechanisms responsible for the radio quasi-periodic oscillations and the multiplicity of the periods are discussed.

title: Lattice SU(2) gauge-Higgs system in analytic treatment
abstract: The phase diagrams of SU(2) gauge-Higgs model with Higgs field of arbitrary length in the fundamental representation in four and five dimension are studied analytically. A method for determining phase transition lines is proposed. All qualitative features of the phase diagram obtained by Monte Carlo simulations are obtained analytically, and the order of phase transitions can be determined definitely.

title: A graphical analysis of the systematic error of classical binned methods in constructing luminosity functions
abstract: The classical 1/Va and PC methods of constructing binned luminosity functions (LFs) are revisited and compared by graphical analysis. Using both theoretical analysis and illustration with an example, we show why the two methods give different results for the bins which are crossed by the flux limit curves L=Llim(z). Based on a combined sample simulated by a Monte Carlo method, the estimate ϕ of two methods are compared with the input model LFs. The two methods give identical and ideal estimate for the high luminosity points of each redshift interval. However, for the low luminosity bins of all the redshift intervals both methods give smaller estimate than the input model. We conclude that once the LF is evolving with redshift, the classical binned methods will unlikely give an ideal estimate over the total luminosity range. Page & Carrera ( 2000) noticed that for objects close to the flux limit $\phi_{1/V_{a}}$ nearly always to be too small. We believe this is due to the arbitrary choosing of redshift and luminosity intervals. Because $\phi_{1/V_{a}}$ is more sensitive to how the binning are chosen than ϕPC. We suggest a new binning method, which can improve the LFs produced by the 1/Va method significantly, and also improve the LFs produced by the PC methods. Our simulations show that after adopting this new binning, both the 1/Va and PC methods have comparable results.

title: Experimental studies on the photoelectron instability in the Beijing Electron Positron Collider
abstract: A vertical coupled-bunch instability was observed for a positron beam at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPC). The experimental results show that the instability has similar characteristics as that observed in the Photon Factory of KEK several years ago. The instability at BEPC can be explained by the effect of an electron cloud which is produced in the beam chamber by synchrotron light hitting the wall.

title: Commissioning and performance of the CMS pixel tracker with cosmic ray muons
abstract: The pixel detector of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment consists of three barrel layers and two disks for each endcap. The detector was installed in summer 2008, commissioned with charge injections, and operated in the 3.8 T magnetic field during cosmic ray data taking. This paper reports on the first running experience and presents results on the pixel tracker performance, which are found to be in line with the design specifications of this detector. The transverse impact parameter resolution measured in a sample of high momentum muons is 18 microns.

title: Substructure lensing: Effects of galaxies, globular clusters and satellite streams
abstract: Lensing flux-ratio anomalies have been frequently observed and taken as evidence for the presence of abundant dark matter substructures in lensing galaxies, as predicted by the cold dark matter (CDM) model of cosmogony. In previous work, we examined the cusp-caustic relations of the multiple images of background quasars lensed by galaxy-scale dark matter haloes, using a suite of high-resolution N-body simulations (the Aquarius simulations). In this work, we extend our previous calculations to incorporate both the baryonic and diffuse dark components in lensing haloes. We include in each lensing simulation: (1) a satellite galaxy population derived from a semi-analytic model applied to the Aquarius haloes; (2) an empirical Milky Way globular cluster population and (3) satellite streams (diffuse dark component) identified in the simulations. Accounting for these extra components, we confirm our earlier conclusion that the abundance of intrinsic substructures (dark or bright, bound or diffuse) is not sufficient to explain the observed frequency of cusp-caustic violations in the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS). We conclude that the observed effect could be the result of the small number statistics of CLASS, or intergalactic haloes along the line of sight acting as additional sources of lensing flux anomalies. Another possibility is that this discrepancy signals a failure of the CDM model.