European Development Studies

In order to keep ALMA at the forefront of technology, ESO invites its member state institutes to participate in the European ALMA development programme. Every three years, ESO issues a call for development studies. Below, we provide an overview of the studies approved in 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022.

ALMA Development studies aim at informing and developing technologies to implement the long term ALMA Development Roadmap. The majority of studies since 2016 are focused on the themes identified in the ALMA 2030 Reports. Three ALMA working groups have translated these scientific priorities into three draft technical specification recommendation documents on the receivers and digitizers, the correlator, and the signal chain.

It is emphasized that the three working groups presented recommendations, despite the impression that some document title might give, for updated system and subsystem requirements in the context of the ALMA 2030 Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade. Final system specifications and final sub-system specifications will be treated in due course.

The North American and East Asian ALMA partners have a similar development study programme. The overview of these studies can be found here: NA Studies and EA studies.

In addition to the external studies, ESO also runs several small internal development studies which require inside knowledge of the ALMA systems. These generally use only limited FTE and are supported financially only for a small travel budget.

Studies 2022

Author (PI)               
Institute                     
Title
Juan Daniel Gallego Observatorio de Yebes, Spain Development of InP MMIC based Wideband Low-Noise Amplifiers for the Next Generation ALMA Receivers
Danielle George University of Manchester, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK TASER: Towards ALMA System on Chip European Receivers
Ronald Hesper NOVA, The Netherlands
Towards a Producible ALMA2030-Ready Band 9 CCA
Stefan Wijnholds ASTRON, The Netherlands Streaming visibility processing for ALMA
Victor Belitsky GARD, Sweden
Advanced waveguide component technologies
Georgios Magdis Cosmic DAWN Center, DTU, Denmark Science cases and technical considerations for ALMA focal plane arrays
Kelley Hess Chalmers University of Technology ALMA Spectral Line Advanced Data Product Pipeline Prototype

Studies 2019

Author (PI)               
Institute                     
Title
Benjamin Quertier LAB, France
Upgrading the ALMA Digital System, from Digitization to Correlation Final Report
Alexey Pavolotsky GARD, Sweden SIS Process Development to serve next generation receivers for ALMA
Victor Belitsky GARD, Sweden ALMA Band 6 and 7 Cold Cartridge Demonstator  
Juan Ramon Pardo
IFF/CSIC, Spain
Improved and tested atmospheric model beyond 300 GHz
Frédéric Gueth IRAM, France Feasibility study for an ALMA Band 7 upgrade
Miroslav Bárta ASCR, Czech Republic Towards High-resolution Solar ALMA Images Overcoming current ObsMode limitations

Studies 2016

Author (PI)            Institute                       
Title
Andrey Baryshev NOVA, The Netherlands Alma Digital Front-End: Configurations Study, Final Report
Victor Belitsky GARD, Sweden SIS Junction Technology Development for Wideband 2SB Receivers
Alan Bridger STFC, UK The Evolution of ALMA Proposal and Observation Preparation
Gary Fuller UoM, UK InP MMIC LNAs for ALMA Band 2+3: Pushing the Noise Limit
Ronald Hesper NOVA, The Netherlands Improving Band 9 Sensitivity by Advanced Tuning Algorithms
Ronald Hesper NOVA, The Netherlands Full 2SB Receiver Upgrade for ALMA Band 9: Implementation Study
Mathias Maercker & Sven Wedemeyer OSO, Sweden & University of Oslo, Norway High cadence imaging of the Sun
Marcella Massardi INAF, Italy The ARI development study
Benjamin Quertier LAB, France Digitization and Digital Signal Processing for 16 GHz On-sky Bandwidth Analysis
Fabrizio Villa INAF, Italy Optimization and Production Engineering of BAND 2+3 Passive Components for ALMA Receivers

Studies 2013

Author (PI) Institute Title
Gary Fuller UoM, UK Development Towards an ALMA Combined Band 2+3 Receiver System
R. Brajša, M. Karlický Ondrejov, Czech Republic & Hvar Obs., Croatia Solar Research with ALMA
Anna Orlowska STFC and RAL, UK Study of Potential Improvements to the ALMA Cryocooler System
Benjamin Quertier LAB, France Very High Speed Digitization and Processing for Enhanced ALMA Bandwidths
Eduardo Ros MPIfR, Germany Phased ALMA as an Element of the Global Millimetre VLBI Array
Peter Schilke Uni Köln, Germany ALMA Analysis Software - an End-to-End view

Studies 2010

Author (PI)               
Institute                     
Title
Andrey Baryshev NOVA, The Netherlands R&D Studies for ALMA Band-9 Upgrade Options
Victor Belitsky GARD, Sweden Preparation for Full Production ALMA Band 5 Receiver Cartridge
G. Fuller, A. Navarrini, F. Villa UoM, IRAM, INAF Science Case, Active and Passive Components for an ALMA Wideband Band 2+3 Receiver
Stafford Withington STFC, UK High-Resolution Interferometry Beyond 1THz with ALMA

Internal studies

Author (PI)               
Institute                     
Title
Erich Schmid ESO
Integrated alarm system
Neil Phillips ESO Longer baselines with the current operating mode
Dirk Petry and Maria Diaz Trigo ESO
New methods for ALMA beam shaping and the assessment of angular scale sensitivity
Fabrizia Guglielmetti ESO Bayesian adaptive interferometric image reconstruction method
Luke Maud
ESO ESO-ALLEGRO Phase rms database
Eric Villard and Gergö Popping ESO ALMA Advanced Data Products