Debris discs reveal the architectures and dynamical histories of planetary systems. Sub-millimetre observations trace large dust grains within debris discs, revealing their bulk properties. Debris discs have so far only been detected around ~20% of stars, representing the bright end of the population. A new facility is required to reach fainter discs, overcoming the confusion limit, with multiwavelength capabilities for characterisation, sensitivity to large-scale emission for nearby targets and a large field of view for surveying distant populations. All of this is made possible with the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimetre Telescope (AtLAST).
@article{arxiv.2512.14803,
title = {Finding New Debris Discs at Sub-millimetre Wavelengths},
author = {Mark Booth and Patricia Luppe and Sebastian Marino and Joshua B. Lovell and Jonathan P. Marshall and Gaspard Duchêne and Isabel Rebollido and Mark C. Wyatt and Riouhei Nakatani and Aya E. Higuchi and Miguel Chavez-Dagostino and Hiroshi Kobayashi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.14803},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
4 pages. This white paper was submitted to ESO Expanding Horizons in support of AtLAST. This white paper summarises the debris disc part of the AtLAST Science: Our Galaxy case study (arXiv:2403.00917)