Simultaneous Millimeter-wave, Gamma-Ray, and Optical Monitoring of the Blazar PKS 2326-502 during a Flaring State

Including millimeter-wave (mm-wave) data in multi-wavelength studies of the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) can provide insights into AGN physics that are not easily accessible at other wavelengths. We demonstrate in this work the potential of cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescopes to provide long-term, high-cadence mm-wave AGN monitoring over large fractions of sky. We report on a pilot study using data from the SPTpol instrument on the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which was designed to observe the CMB at arcminute and larger angular scales. Between 2013 and 2016, SPTpol was used primarily to observe a single 500 deg^2 field, covering the entire field several times per day with detectors sensitive to radiation in bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We use SPT 150 GHz observations to create AGN light curves, and we compare these mm-wave light curves to those at other wavelengths, in particular gamma-ray and optical. In this Letter, we focus on a single source, PKS 2326-502, which has extensive, day-timescale monitoring data in gamma-ray, optical, and now mm-wave between 2013 and 2016. We find PKS 2326-502 to be in a flaring state in the first two years of this monitoring, and we present a search for evidence of correlated variability between mm-wave, optical R band, and gamma-ray observations. This pilot study is paving the way for AGN monitoring with current and upcoming CMB experiments such as SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, including multi-wavelength studies with facilities such as VRO-LSST.
Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted to Astrophysical Journal Letters