ALMA: Planned Sensitivity Upgrades, and Molecular Gas Imaging of a z=0.376 HI-Detected Galaxy
Channel: IAA - Comunicación
Date: 2023-03-10

This talk will cover two distinct topics in progress, one programmatic and the other science: I will first discuss the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU), and then I'll talk about ALMA followup of the highest redshift HI detection in the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES) made with the first 178 hours of observing. With regard to the WSU, the ALMA Project is embarking on a partner-wide initiative to at least double, and ultimately quadruple the correlated bandwidth of ALMA by 2030. I will describe the key aspects of the upgrade, including improvements to most of the digital signal chain from the receivers to a 2nd Generation Correlator, then describe in some depth the gains that will be afforded to a variety of science cases by the upgrade. These gains are significantly improved sensitivity, vastly more spectral channels, and better tuning flexibility. Then I will proceed to describe the ALMA observations of molecular gas traced by CO (3-2) in a barred, starbursting, luminous infrared galaxy at z = 0.376. Though the HI detection of this system indicates a potential interaction due to the asymmetric and extended nature of the neutral hydrogen, and the previous CO (1-0) single dish spectrum indicates a richness in molecular gas, the CO (3-2) observations with ~2 kpc resolution primarily trace the bar.