In order to keep ALMA at the forefront of technology, ESO invites its member state institutes to participate in the European ALMA development programme. Every three years, ESO issues a call for development studies. Below, we provide an overview of the studies approved in 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022.

ALMA Development studies aim at informing and developing technologies to implement the long term ALMA Development Roadmap. The majority of studies since 2016 are focused on the themes identified in the ALMA 2030 Reports. Three ALMA working groups have translated these scientific priorities into three draft technical specification recommendation documents on the receivers and digitizers, the correlator, and the signal chain.

It is emphasized that the three working groups presented recommendations, despite the impression that some document title might give, for updated system and subsystem requirements in the context of the ALMA 2030 Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade. Final system specifications and final sub-system specifications will be treated in due course.

The North American and East Asian ALMA partners have a similar development study programme. The overview of these studies can be found here: NA Studies and EA studies.

In addition to the external studies, ESO also runs several small internal development studies which require inside knowledge of the ALMA systems. These generally use only limited FTE and are supported financially only for a small travel budget.

Studies 2022

Studies 2019

Studies 2016

Studies 2013

Studies 2010

Internal studies