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The Alma Phasing System: a Beamforming Capability for Ultra-High-Resolution Science at (Sub)Millimeter Wavelengths

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The Alma Phasing System: a Beamforming Capability for Ultra-High-Resolution Science at (Sub)Millimeter Wavelengths Draft version November 21, 2017 Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 12/16/11 THE ALMA PHASING SYSTEM: A BEAMFORMING CAPABILITY FOR ULTRA-HIGH-RESOLUTION SCIENCE AT (SUB)MILLIMETER WAVELENGTHS L. D. Matthews1, G. B. Crew1, S. S. Doeleman1,2, R. Lacasse3, A. F. Saez4, W. Alef5, K. Akiyama1,6, R. Amestica3, J. M. Anderson5,7, D. A. Barkats2,4, A. Baudry8, D. Broguiere` 9, R. Escoffier3, V. L. Fish1, J. Greenberg3, M. H. Hecht1, R. Hiriart10, A. Hirota4, M. Honma6,11, P. T. P. Ho12, C. M. V. Impellizzeri4, M. Inoue12, Y. Kohno6, B. Lopez4, I. Mart´ı-Vidal13, H. Messias4,14, Z. Meyer-Zhao12, M. Mora-Klein3, N. M. Nagar15, H. Nishioka12, T. Oyama6, V. Pankratius1, J. Perez3, N. Phillips4, N. Pradel12, H. Rottmann5, A. L. Roy5, C. A. Ruszczyk1, B. Shillue3, S. Suzuki6, R. Treacy3 Draft version November 21, 2017 ABSTRACT The Atacama Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Phasing Project (APP) has developed and deployed the hardware and software necessary to coherently sum the signals of individual ALMA antennas and record the aggregate sum in Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Data Exchange Format. These beamforming capabilities allow the ALMA array to collectively function as the equiv- alent of a single large aperture and participate in global VLBI arrays. The inclusion of phased ALMA in current VLBI networks operating at (sub)millimeter wavelengths provides an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity, as well as enhancements in u-v coverage and north-south angular resolu- tion. The availability of a phased ALMA enables a wide range of new ultra-high angular resolution science applications, including the resolution of supermassive black holes on event horizon scales and studies of the launch and collimation of astrophysical jets. It also provides a high-sensitivity aperture that may be used for investigations such as pulsar searches at high frequencies. This paper provides an overview of the ALMA Phasing System design, implementation, and performance characteristics. Subject headings: instrumentation: high angular resolution { instrumentation: interferometers { meth- ods: observational 1. BACKGROUND the 1960s to measure the sizes and structures of radio The technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry sources on scales finer than a milliarcsecond (see Keller- (VLBI) provides measurements of astronomical sources mann & Cohen 1988; Walker 1999). Extension of VLBI with the highest angular resolution presently achievable. techniques to the millimeter (mm) regime brings into At centimeter wavelengths, VLBI has been used since reach still higher angular resolution|as fine as a few tens of microarcseconds. VLBI at mm wavelengths is also uniquely powerful in enabling the study of sources that 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observa- tory, 99 Millstone Road, Westford, MA 01886 USA are scatter-broadened or self-absorbed at longer wave- 2 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden lengths (e.g., extragalactic radio sources and supermas- Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA sive black holes; Krichbaum 2003; Doeleman et al. 2008; 3 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, NRAO Technology Hada et al. 2013; Boccardi et al. 2016), or that emit Center, 1180 Boxwood Estate Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA high brightness temperature emission from spectral lines 4 Joint ALMA Observatory, Alonso de C´ordova 3107, Vitacura in mm bands (e.g., Doeleman et al. 2002, 2004; Richter, 763-0355, Santiago de Chile, Chile Kemball, & Jonas 2016; Issaoun et al. 2017). 5 Max-Planck-Institut f¨urRadioastronomie, Auf dem H¨ugel The successful expansion of VLBI into the mm domain 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany 6 Mizusawa VLBI Observatory, National Astronomical Obser- during the 1980s required both technological advances vatory of Japan, Ohshu, Iwate 023-0861, Japan and the development of special algorithms to overcome 7 Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum, Telegrafenberg, 14473 the challenges posed by the decreasing atmospheric co- Potsdam, Germany 8 herence timescales at shorter wavelengths (Rogers et al. arXiv:1711.06770v1 [astro-ph.IM] 17 Nov 2017 Univ. Bordeaux, LAB, B18N, all´eeGeoffroy Saint-Hilaire, F-33615 Pessac, France 1984, 1995; Johnson et al. 2015). The first successful 9 Institut de Radio Astronomie Millim´etrique,300 rue de la VLBI experiments at wavelengths as short as ∼1 mm in- Piscine, Domaine Universitaire, F-38406 Saint Martin d'H´eres, volved only a single baseline (Padin et al. 1990; Greve France et al. 1995; Krichbaum et al. 1997). Various experiments 10 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box O, So- corro, NM 87801 USA over the decade that followed met with mixed success ow- 11 SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for the Advanced ing to the small bandwidths that could be observed with Studies), Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan the analog systems of the era. The development and de- 12 Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, ployment of digital backends (DBEs) and new recording P. O. Box 23-141, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 13 Department of Space, Earth, and Environment, Onsala systems based on hard drives (namely the Mark 5 record- Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, 43992 ing systems; Whitney et al. 2010) provided a much- Onsala, Sweden needed boost in sensitivity. These and other technical 14 European Southern Observatory, Alonso de C´ordova 3107, developments culminated in 2007 with the first detec- Vitacura, Casilla 19001, Santiago de Chile, Chile 15 Universidad de Concepci´on, V´ıctor Lamas 1290, Casilla tion of Schwarzschild radius{scale structure in Sagittar- 160-C, Concepci´on,Chile ius A* (Sgr A*) at 1.3 mm on baselines from the Ari- 2 Matthews et al. zona Radio Observatory's Submillimeter Telescope to the addition of a phased ALMA to existing VLBI networks James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and a telescope of the operating at mm wavelengths therefore has the ability Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astron- to offer up to an order of magnitude boost in sensitiv- omy (CARMA; Doeleman et al. 2008). Motivated by ity. For many experiments, the geographical location of this success, the 1.3 mm observing array, known as the ALMA also provides a significant improvement in u-v Event Horizon Telescope (EHT; Doeleman et al. 2009), coverage, dramatically enhancing the ability to recon- was expanded over the following years to include the struct images of sources. And when used in conjunction Submillimeter Array (SMA), the Institut de Radioas- with the Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA) at 3 mm, tronomie Millim´etrique (IRAM) 30 m telescope, the At- ALMA will also provide a factor of two improvement acama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX), the Large Mil- in north-south angular resolution. Figure 1 illustrates limeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), and the South the geographic distribution of VLBI antennas currently Pole Telescope (SPT), along with the now-defunct Cal- available to operate in conjunction with ALMA at wave- tech Submillimeter Observatory. Key results from these lengths of 1 mm and/or 3 mm. The 1 mm observing sites observations included the detection of ordered magnetic are part of the EHT, as described above. The GMVA fields in an asymmetrically bright emission region around sites include eight stations of the Very Long Baseline Ar- Sgr A* (Johnson et al. 2015; Fish et al. 2016) and very ray (VLBA), along with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank compact structure at the base of the jet from the super- Telescope (GBT), the Effelsberg 100 m Radio Telescope, massive black hole in M87 (Doeleman et al. 2012). the Yebes Observatory 40 m telescope, the IRAM 30 m Despite these successes, the use of mm VLBI tech- telescope, the Mets¨ahovi 14 m telescope, and the Onsala niques has been restricted to the study of a relatively Space Observatory 20 m telescope. small number of bright sources owing to the limited sen- The science case for a beamformed ALMA, described sitivity of existing networks of VLBI antennas. This is in detail by Fish et al. (2013) and Tilanus et al. (2014), a consequence both of higher receiver noise and the rel- is broad and diverse. VLBI observations of supermassive atively small apertures (or effective apertures) of most black holes on event-horizon scales can be used to gain telescopes operating at frequencies of ∼>100 GHz. Fur- a better understanding of the astrophysics of accretion thermore, at wavelengths shorter than 3 mm, the small in black hole systems and to test predictions of General number of suitably equipped VLBI stations have offered Relativity. High-resolution imaging of the jet launching, too few baselines to allow sources to be imaged (e.g., acceleration, and collimation regions in active galactic Doeleman et al. 2009). nuclei will illuminate how jets are formed, and exquisitely As a major step toward overcoming these limita- detailed studies of the nearest extragalactic jets, such as tions, the ALMA Phasing Project (APP) was conceived the one in M87, will provide a benchmark for the general with the goal of harnessing the extraordinary sensitivity understanding of jet physics (e.g., Asada & Nakamura of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 2012; Asada et al. 2014). (ALMA) for VLBI science. While capturing data from High-frequency pulsar observations enabled by a each separate ALMA antenna is neither practical nor de- phased ALMA (see also Section 9) will aid our un- sirable, ALMA can be used as a single large-aperture derstanding of pulsar emission processes, and pulsar VLBI antenna if the data from its individual antennas searches in the Galactic Center may uncover a system are phase-corrected and coherently added together. The that can be used for relativistic tests at very high preci- goals of the APP were to provide the hardware and soft- sion. (Sub)mm maser observations at VLBI resolutions ware necessary to perform these operations and to record can be used to better understand the physical conditions the resulting data in VLBI format.
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