Intra-night optical variability of AGN in COSMOS field

Optical variability is one way to probe the nature of the central engine of AGN at smaller linear scales and previous studies have shown that optical variability is more prevalent at longer timescales and at shorter wavelengths. Especially, 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 optical variability, we are performing the KMTNet Active Nuclei Variability Survey (KANVaS). Test data of KMTNet in the COSMOS field was obtained over 2 separate nights during 2015, in B, V, R, and I bands. Each night was composed of 5 and 9 epochs with ~30 min cadence. To find AGN in the COSMOS field, we applied multi-wavelength selection methods. Different selection methods means we are looking different region in unification model of AGN, and 100~120, 400~500, 50~100 number of AGN are detected in X-ray, mid-infrared, and radio selection of AGN, respectively. We performed image convolution to reflect seeing fluctuation, then differential photometry between the selected AGN and nearby stars to achieve photometric uncertainty ~0.01mag. We employed one of the standard time-series analysis tools to identify variable AGN, chi-square test. Preliminarily results indicate that intra-night variability is found for X-ray selected, Type1 AGN are 23.6%, 26.4%, 21.3% and 20.7% 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 that there are type and wavelength dependence of intra-night optical variability of AGN.