The basic idea of optical pumping, for which Alfred Kastler received the 1966 Nobel Prize in physics, is that the absorption and scattering of light that is near-resonant with an optical transition can produce large population imbalances among the magnetic sublevels of atomic ground states as well as in excited states. The degree of this

We present near-infrared polarimetric observations of the black hole X-ray binaries Swift J1357.2-0933 and A0620-00. In both sources, recent studies have demonstrated the presence of variable infrared synchrotron emission in quiescence, most likely from weak compact jets. For Swift J1357.2-0933, we find that the synchrotron emission is polarized at

We present results of analysis of observations of the X-ray source 2A 1704+241 with the Rosat Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC) and the High Resolution Imager (HRI). 2A 1704+241 was first associated with the M3II star HD154791 (Garcia et al. 1983). The identification, based upon observation with the HEAO 1 SMC and the Einstein IPC, was

Context. The complexity of the common-envelope phase and of magnetic stellar wind braking currently limits our understanding of close binary evolution. Because of their intrinsically simple structure, observational population studies of white dwarf plus main sequence (WDMS) binaries can potentially test theoretical models and constrain their

Context. Post-common-envelope binaries (PCEBs) consisting of a white dwarf (WD) and a main-sequence secondary star are ideal systems to constrain models of common-envelope (CE) evolution. Until very recently, observed samples of PCEBs have been too small to fully explore this potential, however the recently identified large and relatively

We present a detailed analysis of 101 white dwarf main-sequence binaries (WDMS) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) for which multiple SDSS spectra are available. We detect significant radial velocity variations in 18 WDMS, identifying them as post-common-envelope binaries (PCEBs) or strong PCEB candidates. Strict upper limits to the orbital