Exploring the High-Redshift Universe with ALMA

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent observational results from ALMA on the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies, highlighting its role in understanding early galaxy formation, evolution, and the reionisation epoch.

Contribution

It summarizes recent advances and findings from the high-redshift universe studies with ALMA presented at a major symposium.

Findings

ALMA provides detailed constraints on the ISM properties of early galaxies.

Observations reveal complex interplay between star formation, chemical evolution, and feedback.

Results inform models of galaxy formation and reionisation in the early Universe.

Abstract

The properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) of the highest-redshift galaxies and quasars provide important indications of the complex interplay between the accretion of baryons onto galaxies, the physics that drives the build-up of stars out of this gas, the subsequent chemical evolution and feedback processes and the reionisation of the Universe. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) continues to play a pivotal role in the characterisation of the ISM of high-redshift galaxies. Observations of the dust continuum emission, atomic fine-structure and molecular lines arising from high-redshift galaxies are now carried out routinely, providing ever more constraints on the theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution in the early Universe. The European Astronomical Society's EAS 2021 symposium dedicated to the exploration of the high-redshift Universe with ALMA provided a forum for the observational and theoretical high-redshift ALMA communities to exchange their views and recent results in this rapidly evolving field. The article summarises the exciting results that were presented at the meeting.