The ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade: Promises and Challenges

ALMA is undergoing a major upgrade. It involves increasing the instantaneous spectral bandwidth by up to four times, while maintaining full spectral resolution across the entire bandwidth. Additionally, the entire signal chain of ALMA – from the receivers and digitizers to the correlated data – will be upgraded. This will enhance sensitivity for all observations and increase the spectral scan speed by up to 50 times for the highest spectral resolution. ALMA Band 2, the flagship ALMA upgrade project led by ESO, will be the first receiver to utilize this new, wide bandwidth.

However, this upgrade also presents some technical challenges related to the increased bandwidth required from the receivers to digitizers, digital signal processing, and a 2nd generation correlator.

I will extensively present the upgrade and provide an overview of the science that will be enabled in the coming years, during which some changes in scientific operations are expected due to the scale of the upgrade, deployment, and commissioning activities.

Brief CV of Dr. Rosita Paladino:
she earned her PhD in Cagliari, focusing on continuous and molecular radio emission in nearby galaxies. She then moved to the University of Innsbruck for a two-year postdoc, and returned to Italy in 2011. Since then, she has been working at the Institute of Radio Astronomy in Bologna and is part of the Italian node of the European ALMA Regional Center.