  For several hours on 2008 April 19 the T Tauri spectroscopic binary DQ Tau
was observed to brighten, reaching a maximum detected flux of 468 mJy and
likely making it (briefly) the brightest object at 3 mm in the Taurus
star-forming region. We present the light curve of a rarely before observed
millimeter flare originating in the region around a pre-main-sequence star, and
the first from a classical T Tauri star. We discuss the properties and nature
of the flaring behavior in the context of pulsed accretion flows (the current
picture based largely on studies of this object's optically variable spectrum),
as well as magnetospheric re-connection models (a separate theory that predicts
millimeter flares for close binaries of high orbital eccentricity). We believe
that the flare mechanism is linked to the binary orbit, and therefore periodic.
DQ Tau makes a strong case for multi-wavelength follow-up studies, performed in
parallel, of future flares to help determine whether magnetospheric and
dynamical interactions in a proto-binary system are independent.

Astrophysics