We present ROMA, a parallel code to produce joint optimal temperature and polarisation maps out of multidetector CMB observations. ROMA is a fast, accurate and robust implementation of the iterative generalised least squares approach to map-making. We benchmark ROMA on realistic simulated data from the last, polarisation sensitive, flight of BOOMERanG.

The string-inspired technique is used for a first calculation of the one-loop axialvector vacuum polarisation in a general constant electromagnetic field. A compact result is reached for the difference between this tensor and the corresponding vector vacuum polarisation. This result is confirmed by a Feynman diagram calculation. Its physical relevance is briefly discussed.

AIM To evaluate changes in corneal polarisation properties and their influence on peripapillary retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness measurements after laser assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) by means of scanning laser polarimetry (SLP) with variable corneal polarisation compensator (VCC) in normal white subjects. METHODS SLP was performed by means of GDx VCC on 32 eyes of 32 norm...

We review the present knowledge of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission in polarisation. At microwave frequencies, we assess the expected contamination to the CMB polarisation angular power spectrum, for E and B modes, as expected after the WMAP first year measurements.

The present work demonstrates a fibre-laser system with automatic electronic-controlled triggering of dissipative soliton generation mode. Passive mode locking based on the effect of non-linear polarisation evolution has been achieved through a polarisation controller containing a single low-voltage liquid crystal plate whose optimal wave delay was determined from analysis of inter-mode beat sp...

We present the estimates of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarisation power spectrum from galaxy clusters and filaments using hydrodynamical simulations of large scale structure formation. We focus in the present study on the CMB Quadrupole induced polari-sation, which is the dominate secondary polarisation effect, and give the E and B mode power spectra between l ∼ 560 to 20000.

Figure 1. High-resolution polarisation vision in Sepia plangon improves image contrast. (A) S. plangon responded to looming stimuli that differed in angle of polarisation from the background with an innate deimatic diplay (brightening of body colour). Left portion = pre-stimulus; right portion = post stimulus. (B) Normalized response strength (see Supplemental Information for further details) d...

In recent decades, most methods proposed for radiometric slope correction involved the backscattering intensity values in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. However, these methods are not fully applicable to quad-polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) matrix data. In this paper, we propose a three-step semi-empirical radiometric terrain correction approach for PolSAR forest area data. The three steps of t...

Near-infrared (NIR) and optical polarimetric observations of a selection of X-ray binaries are presented. The targets were observed using the Very Large Telescope and the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. We detect a significant level (3σ) of linear polarisation in four sources. The polarisation is found to be intrinsic (at the > 3σ level) in two sources; GRO J1655–40 (∼ 4–7% in H and Ks-bands...