PLANET HUNTERS. V. A CONFIRMED JUPITER-SIZE PLANET IN THE HABITABLE ZONE AND 42 PLANET CANDIDATES FROM THE KEPLER ARCHIVE DATA*
We report the latest Planet Hunter results, including PH2 b, a Jupiter-size (R PL = 10.12 ? 0.56 R ?) planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a solar-type star. PH2 b was elevated from candidate status when a series of false-positive tests yielded a 99.9% confidence level that transit events detected around the star KIC?12735740 had a planetary origin. Planet Hunter volunteers have also discovered 42 new planet candidates in the Kepler public archive data, of which 33 have at least 3 transits recorded. Most of these transit candidates have orbital periods longer than 100?days and 20 are potentially located in the habitable zones of their host stars. Nine candidates were detected with only two transit events and the prospective periods are longer than 400?days. The photometric models suggest that these objects have radii that range between those of Neptune and Jupiter. These detections nearly double the number of gas-giant planet candidates orbiting at habitable-zone distances. We conducted spectroscopic observations for nine of the brighter targets to improve the stellar parameters and we obtained adaptive optics imaging for four of the stars to search for blended background or foreground stars that could confuse our photometric modeling. We present an iterative analysis method to derive the stellar and planet properties and uncertainties by combining the available spectroscopic parameters, stellar evolution models, and transiting light curve parameters, weighted by the measurement errors. Planet Hunters is a citizen science project that crowd sources the assessment of NASA Kepler light curves. The discovery of these 43 planet candidates demonstrates the success of citizen scientists at identifying planet candidates, even in longer period orbits with only two or three transit events.

title: Accurate Group-Delay Measurement for Radial-Velocity Instruments Using the Dispersed Fixed-Delay Interferometer Method
abstract: The dispersed fixed-delay Intereferometer (DFDI) method is attractive for its low cost, compact size, and multiobject capability in precision radial-velocity (RV) measurements. The phase shift of fringes of stellar absorption lines is measured and then converted to an RV shift via an important parameter, phase-to-velocity scale (PV scale), determined by the group delay (GD) of a fixed-delay interferometer. Two methods of GD measurement using a DFDI Doppler instrument are presented in this article: (1) GD measurement using white-light combs generated by the fixed-delay interferometer and (2) GD calibration using an RV reference star. These two methods provide adequate precision of GD measurement and calibration, given the current RV precision achieved by a DFDI Doppler instrument. They can potentially be used to measure GD of an fixed-delay interferometer for submeter-precision Doppler measurement with a DFDI instrument. Advantages and limitations of each method are discussed in detail. The two methods can serve as standard procedures of PV-scale calibration for DFDI instruments and cross-checks for each other.

title: Accurate Group Delay Measurement for Radial Velocity Instruments Using the Dispersed Fixed Delay Interferometer Method. II. Application of Heterodyne Combs Using an External Interferometer Filter
abstract: A fixed delay interferometer is the key component in a DFDI (dispersed fixed delay interferometer) instrument for an exoplanet search using the radial velocity (RV) technique. Although the group delay (GD) of the interferometer can be measured with white light combs (WLCs), the measurement precision is limited by the comb visibility, and the wavelength coverage is constrained by the comb sampling. For instance, this method can calibrate only half of the SDSS-III MARVELS spectra and reach a precision of 2.2 m s-1. This article introduces an innovative method using a sine source for precision delay calibration over very broad wavelengths. The sine source is made of a monolithic Michelson interferometer fed with white light. The interferometer modulated white light (in a sinusoidal form) is fed into a DFDI instrument for calibration. Due to an optimal GD of the sine source, Fourier components from the DFDI interferometer, the sine source, and their frequency beating can be clearly separated and effectively extracted with a chirped Fourier transform to allow precision measurements of the interferometer GD over the entire range of operation wavelengths. The measurements of the MARVELS interferometer with a sine source show that this new calibration method has improved the wavelength coverage by a factor of 2 and the precision by a factor of 3. The RV measurement error induced by GD measurement uncertainties is controlled to be less than 1 m s-1, which has met the requirements for MARVELS moderate-to-high Doppler precision (~5-30 m s-1) for exoplanet search around V ~ 8-12 solar-type stars. Heterodyne combs using an external interferometer source can be applied in other areas of optics measurement and calibration.

title: MARVELS-1: A FACE-ON DOUBLE-LINED BINARY STAR MASQUERADING AS A RESONANT PLANETARY SYSTEM AND CONSIDERATION OF RARE FALSE POSITIVES IN RADIAL VELOCITY PLANET SEARCHES
abstract: We have analyzed new and previously published radial velocity (RV) observations of MARVELS-1, known to have an ostensibly substellar companion in a ~6 day orbit. We find significant (~100 m s–1) residuals to the best-fit model for the companion, and these residuals are naively consistent with an interior giant planet with a P = 1.965 days in a nearly perfect 3:1 period commensurability (|Pb /Pc – 3| < 10–4). We have performed several tests for the reality of such a companion, including a dynamical analysis, a search for photometric variability, and a hunt for contaminating stellar spectra. We find many reasons to be critical of a planetary interpretation, including the fact that most of the three-body dynamical solutions are unstable. We find no evidence for transits, and no evidence of stellar photometric variability. We have discovered two apparent companions to MARVELS-1 with adaptive optics imaging at Keck; both are M dwarfs, one is likely bound, and the other is likely a foreground object. We explore false-alarm scenarios inspired by various curiosities in the data. Ultimately, a line profile and bisector analysis lead us to conclude that the ~100 m s–1 residuals are an artifact of spectral contamination from a stellar companion contributing ~15%-30% of the optical light in the system. We conclude that origin of this contamination is the previously detected RV companion to MARVELS-1, which is not, as previously reported, a brown dwarf, but in fact a G dwarf in a face-on orbit.

title: The eighth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: first data from SDSS-III
abstract: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in 2008 August, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Lyα forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg2 in the southern Galactic cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameter pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high-metallicity stars.

title: Very-low-mass Stellar and Substellar Companions to Solar-like Stars from Marvels. III. A Short-period Brown Dwarf Candidate around an Active G0IV Subgiant
abstract: We present an eccentric, short-period brown dwarf candidate orbiting the active, slightly evolved subgiant star TYC 2087-00255-1, which has effective temperature T_(eff) = 5903 ± 42 K, surface gravity log (g) = 4.07 ± 0.16 (cgs), and metallicity [Fe/H] = -0.23 ± 0.07. This candidate was discovered using data from the first two years of the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanets Large-area Survey, which is part of the third phase of Sloan Digital Sky Survey. From our 38 radial velocity measurements spread over a two-year time baseline, we derive a Keplerian orbital fit with semi-amplitude K = 3.571 ± 0.041 km s^(–1), period P = 9.0090 ± 0.0004 days, and eccentricity e = 0.226 ± 0.011. Adopting a mass of 1.16 ± 0.11 M_☉ for the subgiant host star, we infer that the companion has a minimum mass of 40.0 ± 2.5 M_(Jup). Assuming an edge-on orbit, the semimajor axis is 0.090 ± 0.003 AU. The host star is photometrically variable at the ~1% level with a period of ~13.16 ± 0.01 days, indicating that the host star spin and companion orbit are not synchronized. Through adaptive optics imaging we also found a point source 643 ± 10 mas away from TYC 2087-00255-1, which would have a mass of 0.13 M_☉ if it is physically associated with TYC 2087-00255-1 and has the same age. Future proper motion observation should be able to resolve if this tertiary object is physically associated with TYC 2087-00255-1 and make TYC 2087-00255-1 a triple body system. Core Ca II H and K line emission indicate that the host is chromospherically active, at a level that is consistent with the inferred spin period and measured v_(rot) sin i, but unusual for a subgiant of this T_(eff). This activity could be explained by ongoing tidal spin-up of the host star by the companion.

title: Dissipation in the effective field theory for hydrodynamics: First order effects
abstract: We introduce dissipative effects in the effective field theory of hydrodynamics. We do this in a model-independent fashion by coupling the long-distance degrees of freedom explicitly kept in the effective field theory to a generic sector that "lives in the fluid", which corresponds physically to the microscopic constituents of the fluid. At linear order in perturbations, the symmetries, the derivative expansion, and the assumption that this microscopic sector is thermalized, allow us to characterize the leading dissipative effects at low frequencies via three parameters only, which correspond to bulk viscosity, shear viscosity, and--in the presence of a conserved charge--heat conduction. Using our methods we re-derive the Kubo relations for these transport coefficients.

title: Upper Limits on the Number of Small Bodies in Sedna-Like Orbits by the TAOS Project
abstract: We present the results of a search for occultation events by objects at distances between 100 and 1000 AU in light curves from the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey. We searched for consecutive, shallow flux reductions in the stellar light curves obtained by our survey between 2005 February 7 and 2006 December 31 with a total of ~4.5 × 10^9 three-telescope simultaneous photometric measurements. No events were detected, allowing us to set upper limits on the number density as a function of size and distance of objects in Sedna-like orbits, using simple models.

title: Device Modeling of Superconductor Transition-Edge Sensors Based on the Two-Fluid Theory
abstract: In order to support the design and research of sophisticated large-scale transition-edge sensor (TES) circuits, we use basic SPICE elements to develop device models for TESs based on the superfluid-normal fluid theory. In contrast to previous studies, our device model is not limited to small-signal simulation, and it relies only on device parameters that have clear physical meaning and can be easily measured. We integrate the device models in design kits based on powerful electronic design automation tools such as CADENCE and OrCAD and use them for versatile simulations of TES circuits. Comparing our simulation results with published experimental data, we find good agreement which suggests that device models based on the two-fluid theory can be used to predict the behavior of TES circuits reliably. Hence, they are valuable for assisting the design of sophisticated TES circuits.

title: Search for new physics in events with same-sign dileptons and b-tagged jets in pp collisions at $ \sqrt {s} = 7 $ TeV
abstract: A bstractA search for new physics is performed using isolated same-sign dileptons with at least two b-quark jets in the final state. Results are based on a 4.98 fb−1 sample of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS detector. No excess above the standard model background is observed. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the number of events from non-standard-model sources. These limits are used to set constraints on a number of new physics models. Information on acceptance and efficiencies are also provided so that the results can be used to confront additional models in an approximate way.

title: Study of double parton scattering using W + 2-jet events in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 7 TeV
abstract: A bstractDouble parton scattering is investigated in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 7 TeV where the final state includes a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, and two jets. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5 fb−1, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. Observables sensitive to double parton scattering are investigated after being corrected for detector effects and selection efficiencies. The fraction of W + 2-jet events due to double parton scattering is measured to be 0.055 ± 0.002 (stat.) ± 0.014 (syst.). The effective cross section, σeff, characterizing the effective transverse area of hard partonic interactions in collisions between protons is measured to be 20.7 ± 0.8(stat.) ± 6.6(syst.)mb.