Updates from the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade Workshop

In June ESO hosted a workshop focused on ALMA’s upcoming Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU). The workshop, titled “The promises and challenges of the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade”, presented the upgrade and showcased the science that will be enabled in the upcoming years. It was also an opportunity to solicit input from the ALMA community that will be used to inform priorities during the commissioning phase.

In short, the WSU is well-underway and consists of an increase of the instantaneous spectral bandwidth by as much as a factor of four, while retaining full spectral resolution over the entire bandwidth. The result is an increase of the spectral scan speed up to a factor of 50 for the highest spectral resolution. In addition, an upgrade of the full signal chain of ALMA – from the receivers and digitizers, all the way through to the correlated data – will result in increases in sensitivity for all observations.

You can watch a video about the WSU here!