Scientific Rationale

The main goal of the workshop is to bring the ALMA and ELT communities together, to identify the common science cases and to outline instrumentation/upgrade priorities for the ALMA and ELT facilities to support these.

The product of the workshop will be a report (rather than proceedings). The report will, on the one hand, present the common science cases in the areas of:

  • fundamental physics, cosmology, and relics of the early Universe;
  • galaxy and ISM evolution;
  • star formation from re-ionization to the present;
  • solar systems near and far.

On the other hand, the report will identify upgrade paths for ALMA and instrument priorities for the ELTs. The latter could be used as a feedback to the ALMA science group investigating science with ALMA in the 2020 era, and to the instrumentation plans of the various ELTs.

We have contacted representatives from the different ALMA partners and ELT projects (see SAC) and got enthusiastic replies from all parties. Thus, we believe that the workshop could become an international milestone for all concerned projects.

We believe that the workshop is particularly timely, as it will feedback into the ALMA 2020 effort and the instrument suite selection of the E-ELT.