The science case and challenges of space-borne sub-millimeter interferometry
Abstract
Ultra-high angular resolution in astronomy has always been an important vehicle for making fundamental discoveries. Recent results in direct imaging of the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the radio galaxy M87 by the millimeter VLBI system Event Horizon Telescope and various pioneering results of the Space VLBI mission RadioAstron provided new momentum in high angular resolution astrophysics. In both mentioned cases, the angular resolution reached the values of about 10-20 microrcseconds. Further developments toward at least an order of magnitude "sharper" values are dictated by the needs of astrophysical studies and can only be achieved by placing millimeter and submillimeter wavelength interferometric systems in space. A concept of such the system, called Terahertz Exploration and Zooming-in for Astrophysics (THEZA), has been proposed in the framework of the ESA Call for White Papers for the Voayage 2050 long term plan in 2019. In the current paper we discuss several approaches for addressing technological challenges of the THEZA concept. In particular, we consider a novel configuration of a space-borne millimeter/sub-millimeter antenna which might resolve several bottlenecks in creating large precise mechanical structures. The paper also presents an overview of prospective space-qualified technologies of low-noise analogue front-end instrumentation for millimeter/sub-millimeter telescopes, data handling and processing. The paper briefly discusses approaches to the interferometric baseline state vector determination and synchronisation and heterodyning system. In combination with the original ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper, the current work sharpens the case for the next generation microarcsceond-level imaging instruments and provides starting points for further in-depth technology trade-off studies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2204.09144,
title = {The science case and challenges of space-borne sub-millimeter interferometry},
author = {Leonid I. Gurvits and Zsolt Paragi and Ricardo I. Amils and Ilse van Bemmel and Paul Boven and Viviana Casasola and John Conway and Jordy Davelaar and M. Carmen Díez-González and Heino Falcke and Rob Fender and Sándor Frey and Christian M. Fromm and Juan D. Gallego-Puyol and Cristina García-Miró and Michael A. Garrett and Marcello Giroletti and Ciriaco Goddi and José L. Gómez and Jeffrey van der Gucht and José Carlos Guirado and Zoltán Haiman and Frank Helmich and Ben Hudson and Elizabeth Humphreys and Violette Impellizzeri and Michael Janssen and Michael D. Johnson and Yuri Y. Kovalev and Michael Kramer and Michael Lindqvist and Hendrik Linz and Elisabetta Liuzzo and Andrei P. Lobanov and Isaac López-Fernández and Inmaculada Malo-Gómez and Kunal Masania and Yosuke Mizuno and Alexander V. Plavin and Raj T. Rajan and Luciano Rezzolla and Freek Roelofs and Eduardo Ros and Kazi L. J. Rygl and Tuomas Savolainen and Karl Schuster and Tiziana Venturi and Marjolein Verkouter and Pablo de Vicente and Pieter N. A. M. Visser and Martina C. Wiedner and Maciek Wielgus and Kaj Wiik and J. Anton Zensus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.09144},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
The paper on 29 pages contains 12 figures, accepted for publication in Acta Astronautica, based on the presentation at the 72nd IAC, Dubai, UAE, October 2021