High-Angular-Resolution and High-Sensitivity Science Enabled by Beamformed ALMA
Abstract
An international consortium is presently constructing a beamformer for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile that will be available as a facility instrument. The beamformer will aggregate the entire collecting area of the array into a single, very large aperture. The extraordinary sensitivity of phased ALMA, combined with the extremely fine angular resolution available on baselines to the Northern Hemisphere, will enable transformational new very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations in Bands 6 and 7 (1.3 and 0.8 mm) and provide substantial improvements to existing VLBI arrays in Bands 1 and 3 (7 and 3 mm). The ALMA beamformer will have impact on a variety of scientific topics, including accretion and outflow processes around black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN), tests of general relativity near black holes, jet launch and collimation from AGN and microquasars, pulsar and magnetar emission processes, the chemical history of the universe and the evolution of fundamental constants across cosmic time, maser science, and astrometry.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1309.3519,
title = {High-Angular-Resolution and High-Sensitivity Science Enabled by Beamformed ALMA},
author = {Vincent Fish and Walter Alef and James Anderson and Keiichi Asada and Alain Baudry and Avery Broderick and Chris Carilli and Francisco Colomer and John Conway and Jason Dexter and Sheperd Doeleman and Ralph Eatough and Heino Falcke and Sándor Frey and Krisztina Gabányi and Roberto Gálvan-Madrid and Charles Gammie and Marcello Giroletti and Ciriaco Goddi and Jose L. Gómez and Kazuhiro Hada and Michael Hecht and Mareki Honma and Elizabeth Humphreys and Violette Impellizzeri and Tim Johannsen and Svetlana Jorstad and Motoki Kino and Elmar Körding and Michael Kramer and Thomas Krichbaum and Nadia Kudryavtseva and Robert Laing and Joseph Lazio and Abraham Loeb and Ru-Sen Lu and Thomas Maccarone and Alan Marscher and Iván Mart'ı-Vidal and Carlos Martins and Lynn Matthews and Karl Menten and Jon Miller and James Miller-Jones and Félix Mirabel and Sebastien Muller and Hiroshi Nagai and Neil Nagar and Masanori Nakamura and Zsolt Paragi and Nicolas Pradel and Dimitrios Psaltis and Scott Ransom and Luis Rodríguez and Helge Rottmann and Anthony Rushton and Zhi-Qiang Shen and David Smith and Benjamin Stappers and Rohta Takahashi and Andrea Tarchi and Remo Tilanus and Joris Verbiest and Wouter Vlemmings and R. Craig Walker and John Wardle and Kaj Wiik and Erik Zackrisson and J. Anton Zensus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.3519},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
The science case for the ALMA beamformer is a living document with input from a broad cross-section of the astronomical community. We strongly welcome further comments and contributions