Kavli-IAU Workshop on Global Coordination

Probing the Universe from far-infrared to millimeter wavelengths: future facilities and their synergies

 

SCIENCE RATIONALE:

The physical conditions and structure of interstellar and circumstellar media dictate where and how stars and planets can form. Both the feedback from star formation and black hole driven activity are important processes in galaxy evolution that have a dramatic affect on the physics of the ISM. Important cooling lines of the ISM and key molecular diagnostics are found in the far-IR to mm wavelength region of the spectrum. This is also where the thermal emission from cold dust, and more generally the energy output from star-forming clouds and galaxies, peaks. These wavelengths therefore provide unique probes of relatively cool, dense interstellar material, central to the study of forming stars, protoplanetary disks, and young forming exoplanets. On larger scales they probe dust and dense neutral gas in the ISM of galaxies and around highly obscured accreting supermassive black holes. This spectral region thus offers key diagnostics of the physical conditions that are important for further progress across a broad canvas of astrophysics.

The far-IR to mm region is also particularly rich in lines of a wide variety of molecules in gaseous and solid form, from simple species like water to increasingly complex molecules such as  sugars, ethers, cyanates, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Following the trail of molecules from clouds to planet-forming disks and mature planets will elucidate the role they play in the emergence of life elsewhere in the universe.

GOAL OF WORKSHOP:

Planning is underway for a new generation of facilities operating from the far-IR to mm wavelengths. The James Webb Space Telescope is now operating, probing the mid-IR out to 30 µm, hopefully for the next 10-20 years. ALMA continues to operate at mm wavelengths, and will be upgraded by 2030, but there are no plans yet for further enhancements in the 2030+ era. Following on from the pioneering work of the Spitzer and Herschel Space Observatory, there is great interest across multiple space agencies in a probe class/medium class far-IR space mission, and multiple mission concepts are being developed.  The ngVLA is a proposed mm-cm class facility that may have 10x the sensitivity of the JVLA. At the lowest frequencies where ALMA operates, it may have 30 times longer baselines, yielding milli-arcsecond angular resolution. 

The goal of this workshop is to examine the needs and requirements for different facilities at wavelengths from far-IR to cm in the 2030+ era (taking financial and programmatic constraints into account), to consider the synergies and complementarities among these facilities, and to explore how to maximize the scientific insights from the data they will yield.