School-Workshop on polarization with ALMA

The Italian node of the European ALMA Regional Centre organizes a 4-day meeting dedicated to the members of the European ARC, on the subject of polarization in the mm-band with ALMA, to be held at the INAF-Istituto  di Radioastronomia (Bologna, Italy) on 25-28 June 2013.

As the commissioning for polarization with ALMA is on its way, we consider it is time to interact with people who know the instrumental properties and with those who are working on the data reduction tasks. The purpose is to reach a better understanding of the polarization issues in the mm-band, both from the scientific and the observational points of view, focussing on how ALMA is going to operate and how we should deal with ALMA polarization data in order to provide optimal user support and to maximize the ALMA data scientific outcome.

For these reasons we dedicate a 4-day meeting to mm-band polarization with ALMA, which will consist of two parts: a 2-day 'school' part (25-26 June) for a limited number (to allow better interaction) of 20 members of the European ALMA Regional Centre and associated nodes, to review the main issues of mm-band polarization, the ALMA properties and the CASA algorithms to address data reduction in polarization, and to provide a set of basic tools for user support for polarization projects; the 'school' part will include a hands-on tutorial on ALMA data in polarization to be held on the second day; and a 2-day 'workshop' (27-28 June) to discuss which activities could be and/or are already being undertaken by the European ARC-nodes, and how we could better coordinate them. The 'workshop' part is dedicated to all the members of the ARC nodes interested in polarimetry, who are also invited to contribute with talks.

Lectures for the 'school' part will be held by Ed Fomalont (NRAO/Chile;  ALMA polarization commissioning) and George Moellenbrock (NRAO; CASA lead developer for polarization), both of whom will also be present at the  workshop.
Only the 'school' part will be limited to 20 participants. We shall prioritize the participation to at least one member of each EU ARC node,
and then more or less follow the chronology of the registration.

At the workshop there is room for a few contributing talks (ca. 20 min), either on polarimetry-science (what do we hope to achieve with ALMA) or of a more technical nature (CASA polarization reduction strategies, algorithms, calibration data bases).

Registration is open via the meeting web page: http://www.alma.inaf.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=145

Please indicate if you are interested to participate only to the workshop or to both parts, and whether you wish to make a short presentation.

For students/early career scientists who participate in the School-part: some financial support may be available through RadioNet if your institute cannot fully support you. One can indicate whether support is requested by ticking the appropriate box on the form.

Deadline for registration is April 30, 2013.