15 GHz Monitoring of Gamma-ray Blazars with the OVRO 40 Meter Telescope in Support of Fermi

Abstract

Since mid-2007, we have been monitoring similar to 1200 sources at 15 GHz with the 40 M Telescope at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. Our sample, mostly blazars, is monitored at least twice per week, yielding densely-sampled light curves. A large fraction of the sources in our sample exhibit significant variation in 15 GHz flux density, enabling variability studies and cross-correlations with other bands. Additionally, many have been detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. We compare our data with gamma-ray data from Fermi and find a statistically significant flux density correlation after accounting for red shift and selection biases using a new Monte Carlo method. The OVRO program is a part of the F-GAMMA project, which also obtains monthly 2.6 - 270 GHz radio spectra for a smaller, overlapping blazar sample.

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