Current Status of the KMTNet Active Nuclei Variability Survey (KANVaS)

Multi-wavelength variability is a staple of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Optical variability probes the nature of the central engine of AGN at smaller linear scales than conventional imaging and spectroscopic techniques. Previous studies have shown that optical variability is more prevalent at longer timescales and at shorter wavelengths. Intra-night variability can be explained through the damped random walk model but small samples and inhomogeneous data have made constraining this model hard. To understand the properties and physical mechanism of intra-night optical variability, we are performing the KMTNet Active Nuclei Variability Survey (KANVaS). Using KMTNet, we aim to study the intra-night variability of ~1000 AGN at a magnitude depth of ~19mag in R band over a total area of ${\sim}24deg^2$ on the sky. Test data in the COSMOS, XMM-LSS, and S82-2 fields was obtained over 4, 6, and 8 nights respectively during 2015, in B, V, R, and I bands. Each night was composed of 5-13 epoch with ~30 min cadence and 80-120 sec exposure times. As a pilot study, we analyzed data in the COSMOS field where we reach a magnitude depth of ~19.5 in R band (at S/N~100) with seeing varying between 1.5-2.0 arcsec. We used the Chandra-COSMOS catalog to identify 166 AGNs among 549 AGNs at B<23. We performed differential photometry between the selected AGN and nearby stars, achieving photometric uncertainty ~0.01mag. We employ various standard time-series analysis tools to identify variable AGN, including the chi-square test. Preliminarily results indicate that intra-night variability is found for ~17%, 17%, 8% and 7% of all X-ray selected AGN in the B, V, R, and I band, respectively. The majority of the identified variable AGN are classified as Type 1 AGN, with only a handful of Type 2 AGN showing evidence for variability. The work done so far confirms there are more variable AGN at shorter wavelengths and that intra-night variability most likely originates in the accretion disk of these objects. We will briefly discuss the quality of the data, challenges we encountered, solutions we employed for this work, and our updated future plans.