THEZA: TeraHertz Exploration and Zooming-in for Astrophysics
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2021
This paper presents the ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper for a concept of TeraHertz Exploration and Zooming-in for Astrophysics (THEZA). It addresses the science case and some implementation issues of a space-borne radio interferometric system for ultra-sharp imaging of celestial radio sources at the level of angular resolution down to (sub-) microarcseconds. THEZA focuses at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths (frequencies above similar to 300 GHz), but allows for science operations at longer wavelengths too. The THEZA concept science rationale is focused on the physics of spacetime in the vicinity of supermassive black holes as the leading science driver. The main aim of the concept is to facilitate a major leap by providing researchers with orders of magnitude improvements in the resolution and dynamic range in direct imaging studies of the most exotic objects in the Universe, black holes. The concept will open up a sizeable range of hitherto unreachable parameters of observational astrophysics. It unifies two major lines of development of space-borne radio astronomy of the past decades: Space VLBI (Very Long Base-line Interferometry) and mm- and sub-mm astrophysical studies with "single dish" instruments. It also builds upon the recent success of the Earth-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) - the first-ever direct image of a shadow of the super-massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy M87. As an amalgam of these three major areas of modern observational astrophysics, THEZA aims at facilitating a breakthrough in high-resolution high image quality studies in the millimetre and sub-millimetre domain of the electromagnetic spectrum.
VLBI
Spaceborne astrophysics
Super-massive black hole
Radio interferometry
mm- and sub-mm astronomy
Författare
Leonid I. Gurvits
TU Delft
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
Zsolt Paragi
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
Viviana Casasola
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
John Conway
Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Onsala rymdobservatorium
Jordy Davelaar
Radboud Universiteit
Heino Falcke
Radboud Universiteit
Rob Fender
University of Oxford
S. Frey
Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE)
Christian M. Fromm
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
Cristina Garcia Miro
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
Michael A. Garrett
University of Manchester
Universiteit Leiden
Marcello Giroletti
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Ciriaco Goddi
Radboud Universiteit
Jose-Luis Gomez
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Jeffrey van der Gucht
Radboud Universiteit
Jose Carlos Guirado
Universitat de Valencia
Zoltan Haiman
Columbia University
Frank Helmich
Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Elizabeth Humphreys
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Violette Impellizzeri
Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA)
Michael Kramer
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Michael Lindqvist
Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Onsala rymdobservatorium
Hendrik Linz
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Elisabetta Liuzzo
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Andrei P. Lobanov
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Yosuke Mizuno
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
Luciano Rezzolla
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
Freek Roelofs
Radboud Universiteit
Eduardo Ros
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Kazi L. J. Rygl
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Tuomas Savolainen
Aalto-Yliopisto
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Karl Schuster
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)
Tiziana Venturi
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Martina C. Wiedner
Université de recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres
J. Anton Zensus
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Experimental Astronomy
0922-6435 (ISSN) 1572-9508 (eISSN)
Vol. 51 3 559-594Ämneskategorier
Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi
Arkitektur
Signalbehandling
DOI
10.1007/s10686-021-09714-y