The ISM at high redshifts: ALMA results and a look to the future

TL;DR

This paper reviews ALMA's transformative impact on studying the interstellar medium in high-redshift galaxies, highlighting recent results and future potential in understanding galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of ALMA's recent achievements and discusses future directions for studying the ISM at high redshifts.

Findings

ALMA enables detailed spatial and spectral imaging of gas and dust in distant galaxies.

Recent results have advanced understanding of star formation and AGN activity in the early universe.

Future ALMA observations are expected to further elucidate galaxy evolution processes.

Abstract

ALMA is revolutionizing the way we study and understand the astrophysics of galaxies, both as a whole and individually. By exploiting its unique sensitivity and resolution to make spatially and spectrally resolved images of the gas and dust in the interstellar medium (ISM), ALMA can reveal new information about the relationship between stars and gas, during and between galaxies' cycles of star formation and AGN fueling. However, this can only be done for a modest number of targets, and thus works in the context of large samples drawn from other surveys, while providing parallel deep imaging in small fields around. Recent ALMA highlights are reviewed, and some areas where ALMA will potentially make great contributions in future are discussed.