ALMA VLBI observations with the EHT and the GMVA: scientific and technical status

by Hugo Messias (ALMA)

Thursday 14 Jul 2022, 16:30 → 17:30 Europe/Lisbon

Seminar Room (LIP (and ZOOM))

Youtube URL :: https://youtu.be/dTApkAWybdM

Since 2017, the Atacama Large (sub-)Millimeter Array (ALMA) has been participating in regular Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations both with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT, at 1mm) and the  Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA, at 3mm). The advent of ALMA in this type of observations has resulted in a revolution in our capability to image and study the environment around super-massive black holes (SMBHs) down to event horizon scales, and thus the way we infer their properties. In this presentation, I will go through the technicalities associated to VLBI observations with ALMA, why we need these observations of SMBHs, and go through the results obtained towards M87* and SgrA* thus far, but also other sources that, unfortunately, did not receive equal attention (eg, CenA, 3C279). I will then finalize with the near-future capabilities of VLBI observations with ALMA, but also the capability of ALMA-standalone phased-array observations for time-domain studies with timing precisions down to 100microsec. One last slide will go through the different possibilities for interested students to join ESO via the internship, studentship, or Fellowship programs.