Variability of Extragalactic Objects in Relation to Redshift, Color, Radio Spectral Index and Absorption Lines

D. Basu
Department of Physics, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada
e-mail: basu@physics.carleton.ca

Optical variability of extragalactic objects, viz., QSOs, BL Lacs and Seyfert galaxies has been monitored systematically over an appreciable period of time and a large amount of data have accumulated. The present work reports results of investigations involving statistical analysis of updated data on relationships between variability and various observed properties of the objects, viz., redshift, color indices, radio spectral index and absorption lines. It is found that at high frequencies (rest frame) radio spectral index does not change significantly with the degree of variability. However, the degree of variability depends on redshifts. On the other hand, presence or absence of absorption lines is significantly associated with variability for QSOs with larger redshifts (z > 1.0), while no such relationship exists for QSOs at smaller redshifts (z < 1.0) or other objects. Correlation between color indices and redshifts depends on the degree of variability and the sample chosen for the color index.

Soft X-ray Variability of the Bright Quasar 3C273

Chulhee Kim
Department of Earth Science Education, Chonbuk National University, Korea.
e-mail:chkim@astro.chonbuk.ac.kr

We present the results from ROSAT observations of 3C273 in the soft X-ray band. The light variation of 3C273 was investigated for three different energy bands of soft, medium, and hard. The maximum variability with a factor of 2 for 551 days was confirmed at all three different bands. This appears to be a periodic variation within the period of roughly 6 months. However, the short-term or micro variation was not so distinct and the light variation of each band did not show any correlation between them. The hardness ratio for hard and soft bands shows irregular variation but there was no correlation between them. There is no distinct variation of the photon index in the case of simple power law model fitting. For power law + free absorption model fitting, the average photon index ( Γ ) is 2.08.

HI Fluctuations at Large Redshifts: I–Visibility correlation

S. Bharadwaj1 & S. K. Sethi2
1Department of Physics and Meteorology & Center for Theoretical Studies, I.I.T. Kharagpur, 721 302, India
 email: somnath@phy.iitkgp.ernet.in
2Raman Research Institute, C. V. Raman Avenue, Sadashivnagar, Bangalore 560 080, India
 email: sethi@rri.res.in

We investigate the possibility of probing the large scale structure in the universe at large redshifts by studying fluctuations in the redshifted 1420 MHz emission from the neutral hydrogen (HI) at early epochs. The neutral hydrogen content of the universe is known from absorption studies for z 4.5. The HI distribution is expected to be inhomogeneous in the gravitational instability picture and this inhomogeneity leads to anisotropy in the redshifted HI emission. The best hope of detecting this anisotropy is by using a large low-frequency interferometric instrument like the Giant Meter-Wave Radio Telescope (GMRT). We calculate the visibility correlation function  á Vν (u) Vν' (u) ñ at two frequencies ν and ν' of the redshifted HI emission for an interferometric observation. In particular we give numerical results for the two GMRT channels centered around ν = 325 MHz and ν = 610 MHz from density inhomogeneity and peculiar velocity of the HI distribution. The visibility correlation is '  10-10–10-9 Jy2. We calculate the signal-to-noise for detecting the correlation signal in the presence of system noise and show that the GMRT might detect the signal for integration times ' 100 hrs. We argue that the measurement of visibility correlation allows optimal use of the uncorrelated nature of the system noise across baselines and frequency channels.

A Map for a Group of Resonant Cases in a Quartic Galactic Hamiltonian

N. D. Caranicolas
Department of Physics, Section of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics, University of Thessaloniki, 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece
e-mail: caranic@helios.astro.auth.

We present a map for the study of resonant motion in a potential made up of two harmonic oscillators with quartic perturbing terms. This potential can be considered to describe motion in the central parts of non-rotating elliptical galaxies. The map is based on the averaged Hamiltonian. Adding on a semi-empirical basis suitable terms in the unperturbed averaged Hamiltonian, corresponding to the 1:1 resonant case, we are able to construct a map describing motion in several resonant cases. The map is used in order to find the x-px Poincare phase plane for each resonance. Comparing the results of the map, with those obtained by numerical integration of the equation of motion, we observe, that the map describes satisfactorily the broad features of orbits in all studied cases for regular motion. There are cases where the map describes satisfactorily the properties of the chaotic orbits as well.

Real-Time Signal Processor for Pulsar Studies

P. S. Ramkumar* & A. A. Deshpande
Raman Research Institute, C. V. Raman Avenue, Bangalore 560 080, India.
*Present address: Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd, No. 65, 13th cross, III phase, JP Nagar, Bangalore 560 078.

This paper describes the design, tests and preliminary results of a real-time parallel signal processor built to aid a wide variety of pulsar observations. The signal processor reduces the distortions caused by the effects of dispersion, Faraday rotation, doppler acceleration and parallactic angle variations, at a sustained data rate of 32 Msamples/sec. It also folds the pulses coherently over the period and integrates adjacent samples in time and frequency to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. The resulting data are recorded for further off-line analysis of the characteristics of pulsars and the intervening medium. The signal processing for analysis of pulsar signals is quite complex, imposing the need for a high computational throughput, typically of the order of a Giga operations per second (GOPS). Conventionally, the high computational demand restricts the flexibility to handle only a few types of pulsar observations. This instrument is designed to handle a wide variety of Pulsar observations with the Giant Metre Wave Radio Telescope (GMRT), and is flexible enough to be used in many other high-speed, signal processing applications. The technology used includes field-programmable-gate-array(FPGA) based data/code routing interfaces, PC-AT based control, diagnostics and data acquisition, digital signal processor (DSP) chip based parallel processing nodes and C language based control software and DSP-assembly programs for signal processing. The architecture and the software implementation of the parallel processor are fine-tuned to realize about 60 MOPS per DSP node and a multiple-instruction-multiple-data (MIMD) capability.