School Registration

Applications for the 2025 Submillimeter Array Interferometry School are now being accepted, and can be found here. Please read the instructions below before proceeding to the application. Applications are due on September 30, 2024 at 10 AM EDT (1400 UTC).

Admitted and wait-listed students will be selected based on their applications. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration without regard to race, color, creed, national origin or gender. We particularly encourage applications from individuals belonging to historically underrepresented groups. We also note that limited travel support for early career researchers, particularly those coming from outside of Tier 1 institutions, will be available to those students admitted to the school^*. As part of the program, successful applicants will be awarded observing time with the SMA, subject to the constraints and limitations listed in the Application Instructions section below.

The total number of participants will be limited to approximately 30 people (in-person + virtual). A registration fee of $200 for in-person attendees ($125 for virtual attendees) will include:

• Local transportation
• Snacks/coffee sessions during the school
• Lunch during the school
• Commemorative t-shirt

Further details on registration payment will be made available to successful applicants, once they are notified in October.

Application Instructions

To apply to the 2025 Submillimeter Array Interferometry School, please fill out the following form located here. In addition to some standard questions (including a brief 1-2 paragraph statement on why you are interested in attending the school), the application also includes a section for the submission of an abstract for a proposed observation. Submission of this abstract is required in order to be awarded time, and applicants submitting observing proposals may be prioritized over applicants who do not. The abstract itself should be no more than two paragraphs in length, and should briefly convey both the scientific objective of the observation as well a statement of the technical requirements (e.g., sensitivity, resolution). Students may re-use materials from prior SMA observing proposals, so long as all material is written by the student submitting the application.

Each student will be awarded one hour of observing time, which may be used at the discretion of the student (some restrictions apply), though students will be encouraged to work together. As such, students may write their proposals in the context of what could be achieved in a full track of time (approximately 8 hours of on source time) at any tuning of their choosing, though students wishing to maximize the feasibility of their proposed projects (and thus getting the data they requested) should use the following guidance:

• Pick a single target, with an RA between 02-14 hours (suitable for nighttime observing in January), and a Dec above -20 degrees.
• Target a frequency/line within the 1.3 mm band of the instrument (e.g,, between 210-240 GHz), or otherwise target continuum at 1.3 mm.
• As we expect to be in COM configuration, choose a target which is suitable to map at approximately 2 arcsecond resolution.
• Target a continuum sensitivity of 0.6 mJy/beam, or a line sensitivity of 11 mJy/beam for a 100 km/s channel (or 110 mJy/beam for a 1 km/s channel).

Advanced users may specify instrument configurations beyond the recommended setup -- you can use the SMA Passband Visualizer and the SMA sensitivity calculator. Note that while weather conditions on Maunakea year-round are generally good, the proposed observations are more likely to happen if they can make use of 4mm PWV weather (i.e., weather suitable for 230 GHz observations) in non-polarization modes.

An abbreviated example:

• Recent surveys in the ZZYZX field has found a high-redshift galaxy with bright CO emission (L_CO10 > 10^10), but exceptionally low CO excitation (r31 ~ 0.1) -- much lower than what one expects in a high redshift galaxy and closer to that of the Milky Way. I propose to make a measurement of the sub-millimeter continuum emission, which would help provide constraints on the total dust mass of this system as well as the (obscured) star formation rate. Based on previous CO measurements and scaling relationships, we estimate that the continuum flux of the source to be 3.0 mJy at 230 GHz, which we can measure to 5 sigma significance in one hour of observing time. Given that the source is only 1 arcsecond across, we expect it to be unresolved by the SMA in COM configuration.

^*Amounts awarded will depend on the number of respondents requesting support.