Unveiling the Baryon Cycle Through Cosmic Time

Abstract

Galaxy evolution is governed by the baryon cycle: gas accreted from the cosmic web and circumgalactic medium condenses into molecular gas, forms stars, and is redistributed by stellar and AGN feedback. Tracing the molecular phase is therefore essential to understanding how galaxies acquire, consume, and eject their baryons. Yet current molecular-gas surveys remain limited by sensitivity, area, cosmic variance, and spectral bandwidth. ALMA2040 would combine a $\sim 10\times$ sensitivity improvement with $\gtrsim 512$ GHz simultaneous frequency coverage, delivering $\sim 100\times$ faster mapping at fixed depth and a further $\gtrsim 25\times$ gain in instantaneous bandwidth. Together, these advances would increase spectroscopic survey speed by orders of magnitude, enabling tiered ``wedding-cake'' strategies: an ultra-deep $\sim 4$-5 arcmin${}^2$ field probing faint and high-redshift reservoirs, a $\sim$0.25 deg${}^2$ survey reaching molecular-line sensitivities comparable to current ultra-deep fields over a much larger cosmological volume, and thousands of independent pointings minimizing cosmic variance. Broad spectral coverage would simultaneously detect multiple CO transitions, [CI], H${}_2$O, feedback tracers, far-IR fine-structure lines, and dust continuum, constraining molecular gas, ISM conditions, obscured star formation, and gas flows within the same observations. Every targeted observation would also become a molecular deep field, extending these measurements to serendipitous galaxies. Together with future HI, optical, and near-IR surveys, ALMA2040 would enable a population-resolved view of the baryon cycle across cosmic time and stringent tests of galaxy formation models.

Part of the ALMA2040 White Paper Series. 11 pages, 4 figures, 1 table