Astronomy Tea Talk

The next generation of CMB surveys are poised to open a new window for transient discovery in the millimeter band. These surveys will cover a large fraction of the sky to unprecedented sensitivity and with high cadence, complementing existing wide-field radio and optical surveys. In this talk, I will discuss the present day landscape of millimeter transients and what we have learned from targeted follow-up observations. Using theoretical and empirical light curves for a wide range of extragalactic transients, in conjunction with known and estimated volumetric event rates, I will present our work characterizing the discovery phase space for millimeter transients in existing and near-term CMB surveys (ACT, SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, CMB-S4, CMB-HD). The detection of transient sources in CMB surveys will facilitate a wide range of scientific discovery, including detailed studies of the jet launching mechanism in gamma-ray bursts, the first unbiased sample of millimeter emission from fast blue optical transients, and constraints on the fraction of tidal disruption events that produce relativistic jets.