Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) science: Surveying the distant Universe
Journal article, 2024

During the most active period of star formation in galaxies, which occurs in the redshift range 1 < z < 3, strong bursts of star formation result in significant quantities of dust, which obscures new stars being formed as their UV/optical light is absorbed and then re-emitted in the infrared, which redshifts into the mm/sub-mm bands for these early times. To get a complete picture of the high- z galaxy population, we need to survey a large patch of the sky in the sub-mm with sufficient angular resolution to resolve all galaxies, but we also need the depth to fully sample their cosmic evolution, and therefore obtain their redshifts using direct mm spectroscopy with a very wide frequency coverage. This requires a large single-dish sub-mm telescope with fast mapping speeds at high sensitivity and angular resolution, a large bandwidth with good spectral resolution and multiplex spectroscopic capabilities. The proposed 50-m Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) will deliver these specifications. We discuss how AtLAST allows us to study the whole population of high-z galaxies, including the dusty star-forming ones which can only be detected and studied in the sub-mm, and obtain a wealth of information for each of these up to z ∼ 7: gas content, cooling budget, star formation rate, dust mass, and dust temperature. We present worked examples of surveys that AtLAST can perform, both deep and wide, and also focused on galaxies in proto-clusters. In addition we show how such surveys with AtLAST can measure the growth rate f σ 8 and the Hubble constant with high accuracy, and demonstrate the power of the line-intensity mapping method in the mm/sub-mm wavebands to constrain the cosmic expansion history at high redshifts, as good examples of what can uniquely be done by AtLAST in this research field.

galaxy formation

galaxy surveys

cosmology

cluster galaxies

sub-mm galaxies

Author

E. van Kampen

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Tom Bakx

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics

C. De Breuck

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

C. C. Chen

Academia Sinica

H. Dannerbauer

University of La Laguna

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Benjamin Magnelli

University Paris-Saclay

F.M. Montenegro-Montes

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

IPARCOS-UCM (Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos)

Teppei Okumura

Academia Sinica

Sy Yin Pu

Academia Sinica

National Tsing Hua University

M. Rybak

Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)

Leiden University

Delft University of Technology

Amélie Saintonge

University College London (UCL)

Max Planck Society

C. Cicone

University of Oslo

E. Hatziminaoglou

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

University of La Laguna

Juliëtte Hilhorst

Yale University

Leiden University

Pamela Klaassen

Royal Observatory

Minju Lee

Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

Christopher C. Lovell

University of Portsmouth

A. Lundgren

Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille

Luca Di Mascolo

IFPU - Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe

University of Trieste

Laboratoire Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste

Tony Mroczkowski

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Laura Sommovigo

Flatiron Institute

M. Booth

Royal Observatory

M. A. Cordiner

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

R. J. Ivison

University of Edinburgh

ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

D. Johnstone

University of Victoria

National Research Council Canada

Daizhong Liu

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Max Planck Society

T. J. Maccarone

Texas Tech University at Lubbock

M. W.L. Smith

Cardiff University

Alexander Thelen

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

S. Wedemeyer

University of Oslo

Open Research Europe

27325121 (eISSN)

Vol. 4 122

Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

DOI

10.12688/openreseurope.17445.1

More information

Latest update

3/9/2025 1