The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey II. Daily and Monthly Monitoring for Transients and Variability in the Bootes Field

TL;DR

This study conducted daily and monthly radio observations of the Bootes field to search for transient and variable sources, setting upper limits on transient surface densities and analyzing source variability over time.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic, unbiased survey of radio transients and variability in the Bootes field at 3.1 GHz, with new constraints on transient surface densities and variability characteristics.

Findings

No transients detected in daily or monthly images.

Approximately 20% of sources show variability.

Upper limits on transient surface density at 15 mJy and 5 mJy.

Abstract

We present results from daily radio continuum observations of the Bootes field as part of the Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS). These results are part of a systematic and unbiased campaign to characterize variable and transient sources in the radio sky. The observations include 78 individual epochs distributed over 5 months at a radio frequency of 3.1 GHz with a median RMS image noise in each epoch of 2.8 mJy. We produce 5 monthly images with a median RMS of 0.6 mJy. No transient radio sources are detected in the daily or monthly images. At 15 mJy, we set an upper limit (2 sigma) to the surface density of 1-day radio transients at 0.025 deg^-2. At 5 mJy, we set an upper limit (2\sigma) to the surface density of 1-month radio transients at 0.18 deg^-2. We also produce light curves for 425 sources and explore the variability properties of these sources. Approximately 20% of the sources exhibit some variability on daily and monthly time scales. The maximum RMS fractional modulations on the 1 day and 1 month time scales for sources brighter than 10 mJy are 2 and 0.5, respectively. The probability of a daily fluctuation for all sources and all epochs by a factor of 10 is less than 10^-4. We compare the radio to mid-infrared variability for sources in the field and find no correlation. Finally, we apply the statistics of transient and variable populations to constrain models for a variety of source classes.