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
cluster galaxies
sub-mm galaxies
cosmology
galaxy surveys
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
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
University of La Laguna
Benjamin Magnelli
University Paris-Saclay
F.M. Montenegro-Montes
IPARCOS-UCM (Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos)
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Teppei Okumura
Academia Sinica
Sy Yin Pu
Academia Sinica
National Tsing Hua University
M. Rybak
Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)
Delft University of Technology
Leiden University
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
Leiden University
Yale University
Pamela Klaassen
Royal Observatory
Minju Lee
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)
Christopher C. Lovell
University of Portsmouth
A. Lundgren
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
Luca Di Mascolo
Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
Laboratoire Joseph-Louis Lagrange
University of Trieste
IFPU—Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe
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
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
University of Edinburgh
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics
D. Johnstone
University of Victoria
National Research Council Canada
Daizhong Liu
Max Planck Society
Chinese Academy of Sciences
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 122Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
DOI
10.12688/openreseurope.17445.1