This paper presents the ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper for a concept of TeraHertz Exploration and Zooming-in for Astrophysics (THEZA). It addresses the science case and some implementation issues of a space-borne radio interferometric system for ultra-sharp imaging of celestial radio sources at the level of angular resolution down to (sub-) microarcseconds. THEZA focuses at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths (frequencies above \(\sim \)300 GHz), but allows for science operations at longer wavelengths too. The THEZA concept science rationale is focused on the physics of spacetime in the vicinity of supermassive black holes as the leading science driver. The main aim of the concept is to facilitate a major leap by providing researchers with orders of magnitude improvements in the resolution and dynamic range in direct imaging studies of the most exotic objects in the Universe, black holes. The concept will open up a sizeable range of hitherto unreachable parameters of observational astrophysics. It unifies two major lines of development of space-borne radio astronomy of the past decades: Space VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) and mm- and sub-mm astrophysical studies with “single dish” instruments. It also builds upon the recent success of the Earth-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – the first-ever direct image of a shadow of the super-massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy M87. As an amalgam of these three major areas of modern observational astrophysics, THEZA aims at facilitating a breakthrough in high-resolution high image quality studies in the millimetre and sub-millimetre domain of the electromagnetic spectrum.

本文介绍了 ESA Voyage 2050 白皮书，其中介绍了天体物理学的太赫兹探索和放大 (THEZA) 概念。它解决了星载射电干涉测量系统的科学案例和一些实施问题，用于在角分辨率水平低至（亚）微角秒级的天体射电源超清晰成像。THEZA 专注于毫米和亚毫米波长（频率高于\(\sim \)300 GHz），但也允许在更长的波长下进行科学操作。THEZA 概念科学原理侧重于超大质量黑洞附近的时空物理学，作为领先的科学驱动力。该概念的主要目的是通过为研究人员在宇宙中最奇异的物体黑洞的直接成像研究中提供分辨率和动态范围的数量级改进来促进重大飞跃。这个概念将开辟迄今为止无法达到的观测天体物理学参数的相当大范围。它统一了过去几十年星载射电天文学发展的两条主要路线：空间 VLBI（甚长基线干涉测量）和使用“单碟”仪器进行的毫米和亚毫米天体物理学研究。它还建立在基于地球的事件地平线望远镜（EHT）的最新成功的基础上-这是有史以来第一个直接成像的星系M87中心超大质量黑洞的阴影。作为现代观测天体物理学这三个主要领域的混合体，THEZA 旨在促进在电磁波谱的毫米和亚毫米域的高分辨率高分辨率图像质量研究的突破。