Millimeter Transient Point Sources in the SPTpol 100 Square Degree Survey

• Main Authors: Whitehorn, N., Natoli, T., Ade, P. A. R., Austermann, J. E., Beall, J. A., Bender, A. N., Benson, B. A., Bleem, L. E., Carlstrom, J. E., Chang, C. L., Chiang, H. C., Cho, H-M., Citron, R., Crawford, T. M., Crites, A. T., de Haan, T., Dobbs, M. A., Everett, W., Gallicchio, J., George, E. M., Gilbert, A., Halverson, N. W., Harrington, N., Henning, J. W., Hilton, G. C., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hoover, S., Hou, Z., Hrubes, J. D., Huang, N., Hubmayr, J., Irwin, K. D., Keisler, R., Knox, L., Lee, A. T., Leitch, E. M., Li, D., McMahon, J. J., Meyer, S. S., Mocanu, L., Nibarger, J. P., Novosad, V., Padin, S., Pryke, C., Reichardt, C. L., Ruhl, J. E., Saliwanchik, B. R., Sayre, J. T., Schaffer, K. K., Smecher, G., Stark, A. A., Story, K. T., Tucker, C., Vanderlinde, K., Vieira, J. D., Wang, G., Yefremenko, V.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2016
• Subjects: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE; Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics astro-ph.CO; FOS Physical sciences; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1604.03507; https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03507

The millimeter transient sky is largely unexplored, with measurements limited to follow-up of objects detected at other wavelengths. High-angular-resolution telescopes designed for measurement of the cosmic microwave background offer the possibility to discover new, unknown transient sources in this band, particularly the afterglows of unobserved gamma-ray bursts. Here we use the 10-meter millimeter-wave South Pole Telescope, designed for the primary purpose of observing the cosmic microwave background at arcminute and larger angular scales, to conduct a search for such objects. During the 2012-2013 season, the telescope was used to continuously observe a 100 square degree patch of sky centered at RA 23h30m and declination -55 degrees using the polarization-sensitive SPTpol camera in two bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. These 6000 hours of observations provided continuous monitoring for day- to month-scale millimeter-wave transient sources at the 10 mJy level. One candidate object was observed with properties broadly consistent with a gamma-ray burst afterglow, but at a statistical significance too low (p=0.01) to confirm detection. : 10 pages, 7 figures. As accepted by ApJ. Updated version expands sections 3 and 5