Licking the plate: Dusty star-forming galaxies buried in the ALMA calibration data

¹ European Southern Observatory (ESO), Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, Garching, Germany
² Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Giessenbachstraße 1, Garching, Germany
³ Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, UK
⁴ Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM, UMR 7326, 13388 Marseille, France
⁵ UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, UK

^* e-mail: jhchen@mpe.mpg.de; cjhastro@gmail.com

Published online: 28 March 2024

Abstract

Deep, unbiased surveys are essential to decipher the cosmic evolution of galaxies. The submillimetre (submm) and millimetre (mm) windows complement the UV/optical waveband and are key to revealing the cold and dusty Universe. Traditional ways of conducting deep surveys resort to either lensed fields or target small areas for ultra-long integrations. These surveys have greatly advanced our understanding of dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs), but are susceptible to lensing uncertainties and cosmic variance and will be expensive to expand. Here, we summarise our recent multi-wavelength survey of DSFGs in the vicinity of ALMA’s calibrators: the ALMACAL survey. These fields have accumulated many hundreds of hours of on-source time, reaching depths and effective areas that are competitive with bespoke cosmological surveys. We summarise the multi-wavelength number counts from ALMACAL and the resolved fraction of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) from submm to mm wave-lengths. Meanwhile, combining all available ALMA observations in each field results in impressive frequency coverage, which often yields the redshifts of these DSFGs. The ALMACAL survey has demonstrated the scientific value of calibration scans for all submm/mm and radio telescopes, existing and planned.