KAKENHi Project: Formation Processes of Heavy Elements in the Early Universe Elucidated by Superconducting Nanoelectronics, Large-Scale Numerical Simulations, and Data Science

Sub/millimeter Line Intensity Mapping - Terahertz Integral Field Units with Universal Nanotechnology (SUBLIME-TIFUUN)

Outline

Understanding the star-forming activity throughout the 13.8 billion-year history of the universe, along with the physical processes that govern it, is crucial for unveiling the origins of heavy elements and materials, which were formed within stars and constitute the world and life. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has now discovered galaxies in the early Universe, mere hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, in the visible to mid-infrared wavelengths. Sub/millimeter-wave observations are essential for detecting star formation obscured by solid particles of heavy elements, i.e., ‘dust’. There has been significant progress in observing individually detectable bright galaxies using ALMA. However, studying dust-enshrouded star formation in fainter, and thus more numerous galaxies remains a formidable challenge, even with ALMA.

Purpose

Obscured star-formation and heavy element productions via [CII] LIM We propose to conduct the “line intensity mapping” (LIM) observations targeting the ionized carbon emission [CII] 158$\mu$m line. LIM measures the integral amount of energy emitted by the spectral lines of galaxies averaged in the spatial and depth (redshift) directions. Thus one can assess the contributions from faint and numerous galaxies that are difficult to detect individually. We develop the superconducting imaging spectrograph TIFUUN and data-scientific methods to separate the atmospheric emission and contaminating foreground lines. We will quantify the dust-obscured star formation and clarify the formation and accumulation of heavy elements in the first 2 billion years of the Universe by detecting the [CII] LIM signals.