EMERGE started on September 2020 after a change of the host institution to the University of Vienna. This first reporting period corresponds to the time from this starting data and the Summer of 2021. It therefore includes the first technical developments and analysis steps of the project in preparation for main data production phase expected for next year.
Two main technical milestones for this project have been achieved during this period. In collaboration with the Dutch ALMA ARC node, we created and published the new ALminer software (Ahmadi & Hacar 2021) for the exploitation of the ALMA archive. ALminer is an open source tool offered to the community in a public repository (
https://github.com/emerge-erc/ALminer(öffnet in neuem Fenster)). With this state-of-the-art software we open the possibility to efficiently explore the vast content of the ALMA Scientific Archive. ALminer is an instrumental piece of software for EMERGE as it will be used to define the survey of targets to be explored in the next years. On the other hand, during this period we have successfully carried out the first large-scale ALMA data reduction using supercomputer facilities. That includes the first parallel and massive reduction at the SURFsara supercomputer in Amsterdam (NL). Also, it includes its transfer and portability to the Vienna Scientific Cluster in Austria. To our knowledge, EMERGE is the first project to carry out massive data reduction of more than 800 individual ALMA continuum observations in less than a day. This work has been recently submitted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (van Terwisga, Hacar, et al 2021). The development of ALminer together with the parallel data processing carried out in supercomputers set the foundations for the EMEGER analysis which will make use of these tools in the next years.
During the last months, three researchers have joined the EMERGE team, namely, 2x PhDs and 1x postdoc, who will be joining the PI during the next years. With the full research team already in place, EMERGE is exploring three key aspects for the project. First, we are now developing he analysis tools for the extraction and characterization of dense fibers in molecular datasets. With it, we aim to create the framework for the uniform analysis of our ALMA observations. Second, we started the design and exploration of our data pipeline. In this step, our goal is to be able to process the data selected by ALminer (see above). For that, we are now exploring the extraction of metadata information from standard visibility files from ALMA. This extraction is required in order to automatically process these data in our supercomputers. Last, we are also carrying out the first ALMA simulations. Our goal here is to quantify the effects of the interferometers in the observed data, a key piece to assess the reliability of the gas properties extracted there. These developments are expected to be complete by the end of the next reporting period in order to start the scientific exploitation of the EMERGE survey.
The scientific research of this project is complemented with ta key review chapter for Protostars and Planets VII (PPVII) on the “Initial conditions for Star Formation: a physical description of the filamentary ISM”. The PI of the EMERGE project is leading and coordinating this project with contributions with another 6 top researchers in the field. The Protostars and Planets series is the largest conference in the field taking place every ~5-7 years. The goal of this conference is to summarize the main results in the star and planet formation communities during that period. The leading role of the PI in this project, with a particular emphasis on the study of the filament physics, highlights the relevance of the research carried out in this project.
