ALMA2040: Mapping the Spatially Resolved Dust and Star Formation Physics Driving High-z Galaxy Assembly

@misc{liu2026alma2040,
  title = {{ALMA2040: Mapping the Spatially Resolved Dust and Star Formation Physics Driving High-z Galaxy Assembly}},
  author = {Daizhong Liu and Gergö Popping and Pierre Cox and Andreas Faisst and Mamta Pandey-Pommier and Dieu Nguyen and Román Fernandez Aranda and Elisabete da Cunha and Andrea Lapi and Tanio Díaz Santos and Ryota Ikeda and Jacqueline Hodge and Isabella Lamperti and Manuel Aravena and Irene Shivaei and Adarsh Kumar and Roberto Decarli and Mahmoud Hamed and Umberto Maio and Gareth Jones and Jianhang Chen and Sylvia Adscheid},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.22228},
  eprint = {2610.22228},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22228},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - ALMA2040: Mapping the Spatially Resolved Dust and Star Formation Physics Driving High-z Galaxy Assembly
AU  - Daizhong Liu
AU  - Gergö Popping
AU  - Pierre Cox
AU  - Andreas Faisst
AU  - Mamta Pandey-Pommier
AU  - Dieu Nguyen
AU  - Román Fernandez Aranda
AU  - Elisabete da Cunha
AU  - Andrea Lapi
AU  - Tanio Díaz Santos
AU  - Ryota Ikeda
AU  - Jacqueline Hodge
AU  - Isabella Lamperti
AU  - Manuel Aravena
AU  - Irene Shivaei
AU  - Adarsh Kumar
AU  - Roberto Decarli
AU  - Mahmoud Hamed
AU  - Umberto Maio
AU  - Gareth Jones
AU  - Jianhang Chen
AU  - Sylvia Adscheid
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/15
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.22228
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22228
AB  - Interstellar dust reprocesses approximately half of the starlight emitted across cosmic history. However, dust temperature, which is essential to convert continuum flux into dust mass, molecular gas mass, and obscured star-formation rates, remains largely unconstrained on sub-galactic scales at high redshift. While single-band ALMA imaging has characterized continuum sizes for hundreds of z>1 galaxies, single-frequency measurements cannot separate the dust mass column from the local dust heating. To date, spatially resolved (<0.5-arcsec) multi-band dust temperatures exist in the literature for only ~10 extreme systems (quasars, hyperluminous starbursts, or strongly lensed galaxies) at z>1, with ongoing programs within a few years adding at most a few dozen submillimeter or UV-bright galaxies. This still leaves typical main-sequence disks largely unexplored across cosmic history. With an anticipated ~30 times improvement in continuum sensitivity (compared to the current ALMA), simultaneous multi-band receivers, and (sub-)kpc angular resolution, ALMA2040 will transform resolved dust thermometry into a systematic survey science. Here, we present the scientific rationale and technical requirements, highlighting a future statistically meaningful survey with > 100 representative main-sequence galaxies across cosmic epochs. Realistic visibility simulations demonstrate that ALMA2040 measures radial temperature gradients with ~0.5-4 K precision (L_IR~10^{12} L_sun in 2 h on-source at z~2). These measurements will break the degeneracy between intrinsic compactness and temperature gradients, deliver the first extinction-free, temperature-calibrated resolved star-formation relations, and uniquely trace radiative feedback and disk maturation from cosmic noon to cosmic dawn.
ER  -