Extrasolar Planet Research with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array

The millimeter to submillimeter spectral region offers excellent opportunity
for research on extrasolar planets, especially during the next decade as
precise and sensitive high resolution imaging becomes available with the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA.  Massive nearby protoplanets will
be detected directly, as will more distant very young protoplanets; measured
stellar reflex motions driven by planets will complement radial velocity
information; and circumstellar, protoplanetary and debris disks will be imaged
and characterized, both in dust and gas constituents.  ALMA, to be located
at an altitude of 5000 m on the Chajnantor plains of northern Chile will
provide images up to 10 milliarcsec resolution at a continuum sensitivity nearly
three orders of magnitude better than current arrays.  With this sensitivity
ALMA will detect giant protoplanets about nearby stars, and young giant
protoplanets out to the nearest starforming cloud complexes.  With this
resolution astrometry will provide plane-of-sky stellar reflex measurements to
contrast with radial velocity measures currently in hand and provide a three
dimensional picture of many systems, better constraining exoplanetary masses.
Spectroscopic imaging of the protoplanetary debris will reveal its
chemical and isotopic gradients, enabling detailed study of the evolution of
the material from which the planets form.