The Nordic ARC Node

Welcome to the workshop on advanced software tools for interferometry organised by the Nordic ARC node in Gothenburg in November 2017. The event brought together the people working on software development at the European ALMA nodes, to present existing tools and discuss the strategy and needs for future software.

Workshop topics

Some of the topics that were discussed during the workshop are:

• Advanced Data Analysis (e.g., visibility model-fitting, self-calibration, the Sun, ...)
• Advanced Data Calibration (e.g., array combination, spectral scans, (mm-)VLBI, atmospheric turbulence,...) 
• Archive and Data Mining (e.g., batch processing/imaging of the ALMA archive) 
• Data Simulation 
• Third-party CASA Development (on-going projects, repositories, compatibility, ...)

Invited speakers were:

• Martin Zwaan (ESO)
• Dirk Petry (ESO)
• Elisabetta Liuzzo (Italian Node)
• Ilse van Bemmel (JIVE)
• Luke Maud (Allegro)
• Sven Wedemeyer (University of Oslo)

Program

Session 1: Data Calibration

• Advanced Phase Calibration for ALMA (Luke Maud)
• Automating Self Calibration (Stephen Bourke)
• dreamBeam: a software tool for beam modelling of radio interferometers (Tobia Carozzi)

Session 2: Specific Tools

• Data simulation for ALMA: allowing a fair comparison to models (Eelco van Kampen)
• Modelling of molecular clouds in CASA (Ian Stewart)
• ALMA and mmVLBI - two worlds apart? (Stefanie Mühle)
• Building a toolkit for VLBI dataprocessing in CASA (Ilse van Bemmel)

Session 3: Data Analysis 

• Modelling source structures in Fourier domain: UVMULTIFIT (Ivan Marti-Vidal)
• Spectral Scan data analysis (SpecScan) (Sebastien Muller & Ivan Marti-Vidal)
• STATCONT: A statistical continuum level determination method for line-rich source (Alvaro Sanchez-Monge)
• Robust outlier detection with Bayesian Probability Theory (Fabrizia Guglielmetti)
• Array combination studies for ALMA (Lydia Moser)

Session 4: Archive and Data Mining

• ALMACAL: exploiting ALMA calibrator observations to carry out deep and wide (sub-)millimetre surveys (Martin Zwaan)
• The ALMA Archive: Batch Processing and Data Mining (Elisabetta Liuzzo)
• Simple Software Tools for Working with Complex Measurement Sets / The UK Continuum Finder (George Bendo)
• ARTEMIX - Alma RemoTE MIning eXperiment (Edwige Chapillon)

Session 5: Software Infrastructure 

• Tools for ALMA observations of the Sun (Sven Wedemeyer – moved from Session 2)
• Quo vadis CASA? - some remarks and ideas about the mid-term future of CASA (Dirk Petry)
• ALMA data in GILDAS: some tools (Edwige Chapillon & Anna Lopez Sepulcre)

Acknowledgements
This event has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562 [RadioNet].