Workshop on mm-VLBI with ALMA

The Italian node of the European ALMA Regional Centre organizes a meeting on the subject of mm-VLBI with ALMA, to be held at the INAF-Istituto di Radioastronomia (Bologna, Italy) on 22nd and 23rd January 2015.

Very long baseline interferometry at millimetre/submillimetre wavelengths offers the highest achievable spatial resolution at any wavelength in astronomy and the inclusion of ALMA into a global network will bring unprecedented sensitivity.

An international consortium is presently constructing a beamformer for ALMA in Chile that will be available as a facility instrument. The extraordinary sensitivity of phased ALMA, combined with the extremely fine angular resolution available on baselines to the Northern Hemisphere, will enable transformational new very long baseline interferometry observations in the 0.8 mm and 1.3 mm bands, and provide substantial improvements to existing VLBI arrays at 7 and 3 mm. The ALMA beamformer will have impact on a variety of scientific topics, including accretion and outflow processes around black holes in active galactic nuclei, tests of general relativity near black holes, jet launch and collimation from AGN and microquasars, pulsar and magnetar emission processes, the chemical history of the universe and the evolution of fundamental constants across cosmic time, maser science, and astrometry.

At this workshop we want to review this broad range of science topics allowed by mm-VLBI with ALMA and also discuss the status of the existing and future mm-VLBI networks. This should involve not only current VLBI users but also those who are just becoming interested in this rapidly evolving field.

A closed discussion session for invited participants only will be held on the 23rd of january.

Please note that on the days before of the this workshop, we'll be hosting an Italian community workshop on mm astronomy.

More information.