ALMA Update

1 Recent news

1.1 Construction Progress

There has been a lot of work recently in Chile at the high site. Work on the Array Operations Center (AOC) is proceeding well, with delays of only a few days due to "Bolivian winter" weather (that occurs in mid Summer), and the contract for the completion package (to make the building ready for occupancy) has been submitted for review. The contract for construction of the Operations Support Facility (OSF) is being reviewed by the ESO finance committee. There has been a kickoff meeting for the design of the ALMA building in Santiago, which will be constructed on the grounds of the ESO site. The design on this building depends in broad detail on the ALMA operations plan; what gets done where affects how big the building needs to be and what goes into it. Work on the details of the two antenna contracts are proceeding in the U.S. and Europe.

Figure 1: the shell of the main building for the Array Operations Center for ALMA at the high site (5000 m elevation) in March 2006.

Hiring for ALMA Operations will begin in earnest this year, and is receiving the attention of many people throughout the project, including at NRAO and HIA. In North America, much of the hiring will be for people to work at the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC) in Charlottesville,

http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/

which will be responsible for user support for the North American Community and other aspects of ALMA operations. James di Francesco has recently taken on the role of HIA liaison with the NAASC and is involved in trying to define what the Canadian contribution will be to the functions of the NAASC.

1.2 Reviews

ALMA underwent two additional reviews in the past three months: a "delta" Cost Review in Washington D.C. and an in-depth review commissioned by the NSF of the management of ALMA by AUI/NRAO.

ALMA successfully passed the Delta Cost Review in Washington, D.C. on 26 January 2006. Peter Dewdney from DRAO was a member of both the cost review and the delta cost review panels. The latter review considered the cost, management and scientific impacts of the baseline bi-lateral project having two antenna designs, for which much careful analysis had been done between September and January by the JAO and Executives. The review concluded: "Most of the recommendations of the Cost Review Committee have either been implemented or are underway. The Delta-Cost Review Committee was pleased to hear that the ALMA Board solved two of its most difficult unresolved policy issues in the two months since the Cost Review report was issued..." and concluded, "The change in cost brought about by the decision to purchase two types of antennas is therefore small compared to other uncertainties in the development of the project - for example, it is only one-tenth of the $69M contingency for ALMA construction. With a high degree of confidence, we conclude the use of two antenna types poses no major risk to the successful development of ALMA or to meeting its science goals and represents an inconsequential change in the project cost."

Through a distinguished 11-member committee chaired by Cornell physicist Don Hartill, the NSF conducted an in-depth review of AUI/NRAO's prosecution of their ALMA management responsibilities. At issue was whether reasons for the 32% increase in cost to the NSF to implement the rebaselined 50-antenna ALMA were now fully understood, lending confidence in the cost of the rebaselined ALMA. At this time, the Committee's written report is not available, but Jim Hesser, who attended the review as an observer, reports that the points raised in their oral report were all constructive and positive. Jim also reports that the Chair concluded noting that ALMA is a great project and should go ahead mindful of the advice they are providing.

The NSF Director reviewed ALMA on 2 March 2006, to determine how the NSF will react to the increased costs; his recommendations go to the US National Science Board for consideration at their 9-10 May meeting. While we do not know what his recommendation is, I would say there is cautious optimism that he will recommend to the National Science Board that a 50 antenna ALMA go ahead with the needed additional funding.

1.3 Canadian Reviews

The HIA Advisory Board met 23-24 February 2006, and received a thorough briefing on the current status of Canada's contributions to ALMA. Review materials were prepared by Stephane Claude, Jim Hesser, Lewis Knee and Keith Yeung. While we do not know the outcome of the Advisory Board's deliberations yet, there did not seem to be any controversy regarding ALMA during the meeting.

1.4 ALMA Science Meetings

The second world-wide meeting on "Science with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array" will be held in Madrid, Spain, on 13-16 November 2006. The conference will cover a wide range of topics, which will include the main scientific drivers of ALMA: the formation and evolution of galaxies, the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium, and the processes of star and planet formation. The web page for the conference, now including the preliminary scientific program and registration information, is available at

http://www.oan.es/alma2006/

ALMA will also be front and center at the joint CASCA/AAS meeting in Calgary 1-8 June 2006. There will be an invited talk on ALMA at the CASCA meeting on Saturday as well as a special session on ALMA on Monday during the AAS meeting. Doug Johnstone, Jean Turner, Andrew Blain, and I are the speakers on ALMA at the two meetings. More details can be found at

http://www.ism.ucalgary.ca/meetings/casca06/

Students and postdocs will be interested to know that HIA will be hosting a summer school on Submillimetre Observing Techniques, which will include talks on observing with ALMA, from 14-17 August 2006 in Victoria. Contact Brenda Matthews (matthewsbr@nrc.ca) for more information

2 ALMA Science Advisory Committee

The ASAC met 28-29 January 2006 at the University of Maryland. The ASAC had three charges for that meeting: to review the progress in the science software development for ALMA; to review the plans and progress towards the scientific integration of the Atacama Compact Array into the baseline ALMA project; and to review the existing analysis on the imaging performance of the hybrid ALMA array and advise the project on whether additional work needs to be done in this area. Since the ASAC report has not yet been presented to the ALMA Board, I must defer my discussion of our conclusions and recommendations until my June report.

Figure 2: Chris Wilson (chair) and John Richer (vice-chair) of the ASAC rub the nose of Testudo the Terrapin (the University of Maryland mascot) for good luck during the ASAC meeting in January.

3 ALMA Developments in Canada

3.1 Band 3 Receiver Development

In 2005, we have accomplished a major milestone of the Band 3 development program, the completion of the first pre-production receiver cartridge. We are also very pleased to report that the cryogenic IF amplifier development program at HIA has also been completed and Nanowave Technologies Inc. of Toronto is the licensee of the amplifier technology. The automation process of the amplifier and mixer test set is now completed. The amplifier test set is capable of handling up to four amplifiers simultaneously in each cool-down. With the full automation in place since January 2006, we have been routinely conducting noise temperature measurements of sideband separating (2SB) and double sideband (DSB) mixers overnight without any operator's intervention.

Figure 3 shows a picture of the first Band 3 pre-production receiver cartridge. The cartridge will fully meet the ALMA noise temperature specifications of less than 37 K across the frequency band. The noise temperature performance is shown in Figure 4. A cartridge acceptance test report describing the detailed performance characteristics of the cartridge was submitted to the manager of the ALMA Front End Integrated Product Team (FE IPT) for approval in January 2006


Figure 3: the first Band 3 (84-116 GHz) pre-production receiver cartridge.	Figure 4: Receiver noise temperature for the Band 3 receiver cartridge over the Local Oscillator frequency range.

For more information on the ALMA Band 3 Receiver Project contact Keith Yeung (Project Manager - keith.yeung@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca), Stephane Claude (Project Engineer - stephane.claude@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca), or Doug Johnstone (Project Scientist - doug.johnstone@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca).

3.2 Software

Software work for the ALMA Offline system and the ALMA Common Software system is continuing in Calgary and at DRAO. In the last three months, Raymond Rusk has been involved in migrating AIPS++ tools into the new CASA framework and participating in the ALMA Software Stability Initiative (ASSI) team. Gary Li and Raymond Rusk have been collaborating on framework build issues. The first focus tests of the new python-based version of AIPS++ (to be renamed CASA) started this month. Chris Wilson has been heavily involved in preparations for the user test of the ALMA Pipeline which began in early March. This test includes testers from HIA and NRAO and is focusing on flagging and calibration of single field interferometric data.

Delays in hiring continue to prevent the CADC from making its full contribution to the ALMA Archive development; however, it is expected that the position will be filled within the next two months, allowing work to begin on the design and implementation of the Request Handling component of the Archive system. In the meantime, Norman Hill has been attending the now weekly ALMA Archive team teleconferences. An ALMA Archive team meeting is tentatively schedule for May 2006, possibly in Victoria or in Manchester.

Chris Wilson wilson@physics.mcmaster.ca

Canadian ALMA Project Scientist

(with input from Séverin Gaudet, Jim Hesser, Lewis Knee, and Raymond Rusk)

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On 20 Mar 2006, 15:59.