High-Angular-Resolution and High-Sensitivity Science Enabled by Beamformed ALMA

Vincent Fish , Walter Alef , James Anderson (1) , Keiichi Asada , Alain Baudry (2) , Avery Broderick , Chris Carilli , Francisco Colomer , John Conway , Jason Dexter , Sheperd Doeleman , Ralph Eatough , Heino Falcke , Sándor Frey , Krisztina Gabányi , Roberto Gálvan-Madrid , Charles Gammie , Marcello Giroletti , Ciriaco Goddi , Jose L. Gómez , Kazuhiro Hada , Michael Hecht , Mareki Honma , Elizabeth Humphreys , Violette Impellizzeri , Tim Johannsen , Svetlana Jorstad , Motoki Kino , Elmar Körding , Michael Kramer (3) , Thomas Krichbaum , Nadia Kudryavtseva , Robert Laing , Joseph Lazio , Abraham Loeb , Ru-Sen Lu , Thomas Maccarone , Alan Marscher , Iván Mart'I-Vidal , Carlos Martins , Lynn Matthews , Karl Menten (4) , Jon Miller , James Miller-Jones , Félix Mirabel , Sebastien Muller (5) , Hiroshi Nagai , Neil Nagar (6) , Masanori Nakamura (7) , Zsolt Paragi , Nicolas Pradel , Dimitrios Psaltis , Scott Ransom , Luis Rodr'\iguez , Helge Rottmann , Anthony Rushton , Zhi-Qiang Shen , David Stanley Smith (8) , Benjamin Stappers , Rohta Takahashi , Andrea Tarchi , Remo Tilanus , Joris Verbiest , Wouter Vlemmings , R. Craig Walker , John Wardle , Kaj Wiik , Erik Zackrisson , J. Anton Zensus

1 Department of Computer Science [Chapel Hill]
2 FORMATION STELLAIRE 2013
3 GSI - Helmholtz zentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH
4 MPIFR - Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie
5 LCA - Laboratoire de Chimie et Applications
6 Astronomy Group
7 Department of Oral Anatomy and Developmental Biology
8 Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics

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.

Mots clés: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics; Galaxy Astrophysics; Astrophysics; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Domaines: Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]; Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]; Astrophysique stellaire et solaire [astro-ph.SR]; Astrophysique stellaire et solaire [astro-ph.SR]

Vincent Fish, Walter Alef, James Anderson, Keiichi Asada, Alain Baudry, et al.. High-Angular-Resolution and High-Sensitivity Science Enabled by Beamformed ALMA. 2013. ⟨hal-00862986⟩