A high-dynamic-range view of the growth of structure and the warm/hot Universe

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the need for a large-aperture single-dish (sub-)mm telescope to map the warm/hot ionized gas in large-scale structures across cosmic history, enabling significant advancements in understanding structure formation.

Contribution

It highlights the scientific importance and technical requirements for a new telescope capable of high-speed, high-resolution mapping of ionized gas in the universe's large-scale structures.

Findings

Current observations are limited to a few massive systems at high redshift.

Existing surveys have detected thousands of objects but lack detailed mapping capabilities.

A new telescope would enable comprehensive mapping of the warm/hot Universe across cosmic time.

Abstract

Baryons heat to temperatures above $>\!\!10^5\,\mathrm{K}$ as they accrete onto massive overdensities -- galaxies, groups, clusters, and filaments -- where they ionize and become optically transparent. Deep mm-wave observations such as those with ALMA have begun to probe a handful ($\sim\,$4) of massive systems at $z\!\sim\!2-4$, while low-resolution mm-wave surveys have detected thousands of objects at arcminute resolution out to $z\!\approx\!2$. To truly advance the field of the evolution of large-scale structures, mapping the warm/hot distribution of ionized gas out to the redshift of their formation, the ESO community requires a large-aperture single-dish (sub-)mm telescope. This will need to provide several orders of magnitude higher mapping speeds than currently available while preserving the few arcsecond resolution required for imaging the gas and removing contaminating radio and dusty thermal signals across the full (sub-)mm wavelength range.