arXiv subjects

R. Keskitalo

Publications and source records attributed to R. Keskitalo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

LiteBIRD Mission Overview after Mission Reformation

LiteBIRD is a JAXA-led space mission designed to produce all-sky microwave polarization maps. Its primary science goal is to test representative inflationary models by measuring the cosmic microwave background $B$-mode polarization generated by primordial gravitational waves, while also providing new insights into cosmology, particle physics, and astrophysics. The mission concept has been updated following the reformation activities initiated after the Mission Definition Review in 2024. The current concept preserves the central scientific objectives, while simplifying the payload configuration: a single telescope covers 12 frequency bands with band centers spanning 40 to 402~GHz, corresponding to an optical coverage of 34--448~GHz. The telescope is a cross-Dragone reflector with a 500~mm aperture diameter, cooled to approximately 5~K and coupled to transition-edge-sensor bolometer arrays operated at 0.1~K. LiteBIRD will observe from a Lissajous orbit around the Sun--Earth L2 point during a nominal 3-year survey. More specifically, the primary scientific objective is to achieve total uncertainty in the tensor-to-scalar ratio of $δr < 0.002$ (68\% C.L.), including contributions from foreground residuals, statistical uncertainties, instrumental systematics, and margin contingency. The corresponding map-noise requirements are specified separately for the low-, mid-, and high-frequency ranges over the reionization and recombination multipole ranges. This sensitivity makes LiteBIRD unique not only for inflationary science but also for a broad range of scientific investigations probing the history of both the early and late Universe, as well as for astrophysical processes, including Galactic science. This paper summarizes the scientific objectives, updated payload and instrument concepts, observation strategy, and ground segment plans.

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arXiv2023

Cosmological parameters derived from the final (PR4) Planck data release

We present constraints on cosmological parameters using maps from the last Planck data release (PR4). In particular, we detail an upgraded version of the cosmic microwave background likelihood, HiLLiPoP, based on angular power spectra and relying on a physical modelling of the foreground residuals in the spectral domain. This new version of the likelihood retains a larger sky fraction (up to 75%) and uses an extended multipole range. Using this likelihood, along with low-l measurements from LoLLiPoP, we derive constraints on $Λ$CDM parameters that are in good agreement with previous Planck 2018 results, but with 10% to 20% smaller uncertainties. We demonstrate that the foregrounds can be accurately described in spectra domain with only negligible impact on $Λ$CDM parameters. We also derive constraints on single-parameter extensions to $Λ$CDM including $A_L$, $Ω_K$, $N_{eff}$, and $\sum m_ν$. Noteworthy results from this updated analysis include a lensing amplitude value of $A_L = 1.039 \pm 0.052$, which aligns more closely with theoretical expectations within the $Λ$CDM framework. Additionally, our curvature measurement, $Ω_K = -0.012 \pm 0.010$, now demonstrates complete consistency with a flat universe, and our measurement of $S_8$ is closer to the measurements derived from large-scale structure surveys (at the 1.6$σ$ level). We also add constraints from PR4 lensing, making the combination the most constraining data set that is currently available from Planck. Additionally we explore adding baryon acoustic oscillation data, which tightens limits on some particular extensions to the standard cosmology.

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arXiv2023

Planck 2013 results X. Energetic particle effects: characterization, removal, and simulation

We describe the detection, interpretation, and removal of the signal resulting from interactions of high energy particles with the \Planck\ High Frequency Instrument (HFI). There are two types of interactions: heating of the 0.1\,K bolometer plate; and glitches in each detector time stream. The transient responses to detector glitch shapes are not simple single-pole exponential decays and fall into three families. The glitch shape for each family has been characterized empirically in flight data and these shapes have been used to remove glitches from the detector time streams. The spectrum of the count rate per unit energy is computed for each family and a correspondence is made to the location on the detector of the particle hit. Most of the detected glitches are from Galactic protons incident on the die frame supporting the micro-machined bolometric detectors. In the \Planck\ orbit at L2, the particle flux is around $5\,{\rm cm}^{-2}\,{\rm s}^{-1}$ and is dominated by protons incident on the spacecraft with energy $>$39\,MeV, at a rate of typically one event per second per detector. Different categories of glitches have different signatures in the time stream. Two of the glitch types have a low amplitude component that decays over nearly 1\,s. This component produces excess noise if not properly removed from the time-ordered data. We have used a glitch detection and subtraction method based on the joint fit of population templates. The application of this novel glitch subtraction method removes excess noise from the time streams. Using realistic simulations, we find that this method does not introduce signal bias into the \Planck\ data.

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arXiv2023

Probing Cosmic Inflation with the LiteBIRD Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Survey

LiteBIRD, the Lite (Light) satellite for the study of B-mode polarization and Inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection, is a space mission for primordial cosmology and fundamental physics. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) selected LiteBIRD in May 2019 as a strategic large-class (L-class) mission, with an expected launch in the late 2020s using JAXA's H3 rocket. LiteBIRD is planned to orbit the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2, where it will map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization over the entire sky for three years, with three telescopes in 15 frequency bands between 34 and 448 GHz, to achieve an unprecedented total sensitivity of 2.2$μ$K-arcmin, with a typical angular resolution of 0.5$^\circ$ at 100 GHz. The primary scientific objective of LiteBIRD is to search for the signal from cosmic inflation, either making a discovery or ruling out well-motivated inflationary models. The measurements of LiteBIRD will also provide us with insight into the quantum nature of gravity and other new physics beyond the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. We provide an overview of the LiteBIRD project, including scientific objectives, mission and system requirements, operation concept, spacecraft and payload module design, expected scientific outcomes, potential design extensions and synergies with other projects.

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arXiv2023

From BeyondPlanck to Cosmoglobe: Open Science, Reproducibility, and Data Longevity

The BeyondPlanck and Cosmoglobe collaborations have implemented the first integrated Bayesian end-to-end analysis pipeline for CMB experiments. The primary long-term motivation for this work is to develop a common analysis platform that supports efficient global joint analysis of complementary radio, microwave, and sub-millimeter experiments. A strict prerequisite for this to succeed is broad participation from the CMB community, and two foundational aspects of the program are therefore reproducibility and Open Science. In this paper, we discuss our efforts toward this aim. We also discuss measures toward facilitating easy code and data distribution, community-based code documentation, user-friendly compilation procedures, etc. This work represents the first publicly released end-to-end CMB analysis pipeline that includes raw data, source code, parameter files, and documentation. We argue that such a complete pipeline release should be a requirement for all major future and publicly-funded CMB experiments, noting that a full public release significantly increases data longevity by ensuring that the data quality can be improved whenever better processing techniques, complementary datasets, or more computing power become available, and thereby also taxpayers' value for money; providing only raw data and final products is not sufficient to guarantee full reproducibility in the future.

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arXiv2023

Robustness of cosmic birefringence measurement against Galactic foreground emission and instrumental systematics

The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to search for parity-violating processes like that predicted by a Chern-Simons coupling to a light pseudoscalar field. Such an interaction rotates $E$ modes into $B$ modes in the observed CMB signal by an effect known as cosmic birefringence. Even though isotropic birefringence can be confused with the rotation produced by a miscalibration of the detectors' polarization angles the degeneracy between both effects is broken when Galactic foreground emission is used as a calibrator. In this work, we use realistic simulations of the High-Frequency Instrument of the Planck mission to test the impact that Galactic foreground emission and instrumental systematics have on the recent birefringence measurements obtained through this technique. Our results demonstrate the robustness of the methodology against the miscalibration of polarization angles and other systematic effects, like intensity-to-polarization leakage, beam leakage, or cross-polarization effects. However, our estimator is sensitive to the $EB$ correlation of polarized foreground emission. Here we propose to correct the bias induced by dust $EB$ by modeling the foreground signal with templates produced in Bayesian component-separation analyses that fit parametric models to CMB data. Acknowledging the limitations of currently available dust templates like that of the Commander sky model, high-precision CMB data and a characterization of dust beyond the modified blackbody paradigm are needed to obtain a definitive measurement of cosmic birefringence in the future.

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arXiv2022

The POLARBEAR-2 and Simons Array Focal Plane Fabrication Status

We present on the status of POLARBEAR-2 A (PB2-A) focal plane fabrication. The PB2-A is the first of three telescopes in the Simon Array (SA), which is an array of three cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization sensitive telescopes located at the POLARBEAR (PB) site in Northern Chile. As the successor to the PB experiment, each telescope and receiver combination is named as PB2-A, PB2-B, and PB2-C. PB2-A and -B will have nearly identical receivers operating at 90 and 150 GHz while PB2-C will house a receiver operating at 220 and 270 GHz. Each receiver contains a focal plane consisting of seven close-hex packed lenslet coupled sinuous antenna transition edge sensor bolometer arrays. Each array contains 271 di-chroic optical pixels each of which have four TES bolometers for a total of 7588 detectors per receiver. We have produced a set of two types of candidate arrays for PB2-A. The first we call Version 11 (V11) and uses a silicon oxide (SiOx) for the transmission lines and cross-over process for orthogonal polarizations. The second we call Version 13 (V13) and uses silicon nitride (SiNx) for the transmission lines and cross-under process for orthogonal polarizations. We have produced enough of each type of array to fully populate the focal plane of the PB2-A receiver. The average wirebond yield for V11 and V13 arrays is 93.2% and 95.6% respectively. The V11 arrays had a superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of 452 +/- 15 mK, a normal resistance (Rn) of 1.25 +/- 0.20 Ohms, and saturations powers of 5.2 +/- 1.0 pW and 13 +/- 1.2 pW for the 90 and 150 GHz bands respectively. The V13 arrays had a superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of 456 +/-6 mK, a normal resistance (Rn) of 1.1 +/- 0.2 Ohms, and saturations powers of 10.8 +/- 1.8 pW and 22.9 +/- 2.6 pW for the 90 and 150 GHz bands respectively.

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arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XIII. Intensity foreground sampling, degeneracies, and priors

We present the intensity foreground algorithms and model employed within the BeyondPlanck analysis framework. The BeyondPlanck analysis is aimed at integrating component separation and instrumental parameter sampling within a global framework, leading to complete end-to-end error propagation in the $Planck$ Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data analysis. Given the scope of the BeyondPlanck analysis, a limited set of data is included in the component separation process, leading to foreground parameter degeneracies. In order to properly constrain the Galactic foreground parameters, we improve upon the previous $\texttt{Commander}$ component separation implementation by adding a suite of algorithmic techniques. These algorithms are designed to improve the stability and computational efficiency for weakly constrained posterior distributions. These are: 1) joint foreground spectral parameter and amplitude sampling, building on ideas from Miramare; 2) component-based monopole determination; 3) joint spectral parameter and monopole sampling; and 4) application of informative spatial priors for component amplitude maps. We find that the only spectral parameter with a significant signal-to-noise ratio using the current BeyondPlanck data set is the peak frequency of the anomalous microwave emission component, for which we find $ν_{\mathrm{p}}=25.3\pm0.5$ GHz; all others must be constrained through external priors. Future works will be aimed at integrating many more data sets into this analysis, both map and time-ordered based, thereby gradually eliminating the currently observed degeneracies in a controlled manner with respect to both instrumental systematic effects and astrophysical degeneracies. When this happens, the simple LFI-oriented data model employed in the current work will need to be generalized to account for both a richer astrophysical model and additional instrumental effects.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck I. Global Bayesian analysis of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument data

We describe the BeyondPlanck project in terms of motivation, methodology and main products, and provide a guide to a set of companion papers that describe each result in fuller detail. We implement a complete end-to-end Bayesian analysis framework for the Planck LFI observations. The primary product is a full joint posterior distribution $P(ω|d)$, where $ω$ represents the set of all free instrumental, astrophysical, and cosmological parameters. Notable advantages of this approach are seamless end-to-end propagation of uncertainties; accurate modeling of both astrophysical and instrumental effects in the most natural basis for each uncertain quantity; optimized computational costs with little or no need for intermediate human interaction between various analysis steps; and a complete overview of the entire analysis process within one single framework. We focus in particular on low-$\ell$ CMB polarization reconstruction with Planck LFI. We identify several important new effects that have not been accounted for in previous pipelines, including gain over-smoothing and time-variable and non-$1/f$ correlated noise in the 30 and 44 GHz channels. We find that all results are consistent with the $Λ$CDM model, and we constrain the reionization optical depth to $τ=0.066\pm0.013$, with a low-resolution $χ^2$ probability-to-exceed of 32%. This uncertainty is about 30% larger than the official pipelines, arising from taking into account a more complete instrumental model. The marginal CMB Solar dipole amplitude is $3362.7\pm1.4μ\mathrm{K}$, where the error bar is derived directly from the posterior distribution without the need of any ad-hoc instrumental corrections. We are currently not aware of any significant unmodelled systematic effects remaining in the Planck LFI data, and, for the first time, the 44 GHz channel is fully exploited. (Abridged.)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck IV. On end-to-end simulations in CMB analysis -- Bayesian versus frequentist statistics

End-to-end simulations play a key role in the analysis of any high-sensitivity CMB experiment, providing high-fidelity systematic error propagation capabilities unmatched by any other means. In this paper, we address an important issue regarding such simulations, namely how to define the inputs in terms of sky model and instrument parameters. These may either be taken as a constrained realization derived from the data, or as a random realization independent from the data. We refer to these as Bayesian and frequentist simulations, respectively. We show that the two options lead to significantly different correlation structures, as frequentist simulations, contrary to Bayesian simulations, effectively include cosmic variance, but exclude realization-specific correlations from non-linear degeneracies. Consequently, they quantify fundamentally different types of uncertainties, and we argue that they therefore also have different and complementary scientific uses, even if this dichotomy is not absolute. Before BeyondPlanck, most pipelines have used a mix of constrained and random inputs, and used the same hybrid simulations for all applications, even though the statistical justification for this is not always evident. BeyondPlanck represents the first end-to-end CMB simulation framework that is able to generate both types of simulations, and these new capabilities have brought this topic to the forefront. The Bayesian BeyondPlanck simulations and their uses are described extensively in a suite of companion papers. In this paper we consider one important applications of the corresponding frequentist simulations, namely code validation. That is, we generate a set of 1-year LFI 30 GHz frequentist simulations with known inputs, and use these to validate the core low-level BeyondPlanck algorithms; gain estimation, correlated noise estimation, and mapmaking.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XI. Bayesian CMB analysis with sample-based end-to-end error propagation

We present posterior sample-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints from Planck LFI and WMAP observations derived through global end-to-end Bayesian processing. We use these samples to study correlations between CMB, foreground, and instrumental parameters, and we identify a particularly strong degeneracy between CMB temperature fluctuations and free-free emission on intermediate angular scales, which is mitigated through model reduction, masking, and resampling. We compare our posterior-based CMB results with previous Planck products, and find generally good agreement, but with higher noise due to exclusion of HFI data. We find a best-fit CMB dipole amplitude of $3362.7\pm1.4μK$, in excellent agreement with previous Planck results. The quoted uncertainty is derived directly from the sampled posterior distribution, and does not involve any ad hoc contribution for systematic effects. Similarly, we find a temperature quadrupole amplitude of $σ^{TT}_2=229\pm97μK^2$, in good agreement with previous results in terms of the amplitude, but the uncertainty is an order of magnitude larger than the diagonal Fisher uncertainty. Relatedly, we find lower evidence for a possible alignment between $\ell = 2$ and $\ell = 3$ than previously reported due to a much larger scatter in the individual quadrupole coefficients, caused both by marginalizing over a more complete set of systematic effects, and by our more conservative analysis mask. For higher multipoles, we find that the angular temperature power spectrum is generally in good agreement with both Planck and WMAP. This is the first time the sample-based asymptotically exact Blackwell-Rao estimator has been successfully established for multipoles up to $\ell\le600$, and it now accounts for the majority of the cosmologically important information. Cosmological parameter constraints are presented in a companion paper. (Abriged)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck X. Planck LFI frequency maps with sample-based error propagation

We present Planck LFI frequency sky maps derived within the BeyondPlanck framework. This framework draws samples from a global posterior distribution that includes instrumental, astrophysical and cosmological parameters, and the main product is an entire ensemble of frequency sky map samples. This ensemble allows for computationally convenient end-to-end propagation of low-level instrumental uncertainties into higher-level science products. We show that the two dominant sources of LFI instrumental systematic uncertainties are correlated noise and gain fluctuations, and the products presented here support - for the first time - full Bayesian error propagation for these effects at full angular resolution. We compare our posterior mean maps with traditional frequency maps delivered by the Planck collaboration, and find generally good agreement. The most important quality improvement is due to significantly lower calibration uncertainties in the new processing, as we find a fractional absolute calibration uncertainty at 70 GHz of $δg_{0}/g_{0} =5 \cdot 10^{-5}$, which is nominally 40 times smaller than that reported by Planck 2018. However, the original Planck 2018 estimate has a non-trivial statistical interpretation, and this further illustrates the advantage of the new framework in terms of producing self-consistent and well-defined error estimates of all involved quantities without the need of ad hoc uncertainty contributions. We describe how low-resolution data products, including dense pixel-pixel covariance matrices, may be produced directly from the posterior samples without the need for computationally expensive analytic calculations or simulations. We conclude that posterior-based frequency map sampling provides unique capabilities in terms of low-level systematics modelling and error propagation, and may play an important role for future CMB B-mode experiments. (Abridged.)

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck VI. Noise characterization and modelling

We present a Bayesian method for estimating instrumental noise parameters and propagating noise uncertainties within the global BeyondPlanck Gibbs sampling framework, and apply this to Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) time-ordered data. Following previous literature, we initially adopt a $1/f$ model for the noise power spectral density (PSD), but find the need for an additional lognormal component in the noise model for the 30 and 44\,GHz bands. We implement an optimal Wiener-filter (or constrained realization) gap-filling procedure to account for masked data. We then use this procedure to both estimate the gapless correlated noise in the time-domain, $n_\mathrm{corr}$, and to sample the noise PSD parameters, $ξ^n = \{σ_0, f_\mathrm{knee}, α, A_\mathrm{p}\}$. In contrast to previous \textit{Planck} analyses, we assume piecewise stationary noise only within each pointing period (PID), not throughout the full mission, but we adopt the LFI Data Processing Center (DPC) results as priors on $α$ and $f_\mathrm{knee}$. On average, we find best-fit correlated noise parameters that are mostly consistent with previous results, with a few notable exceptions. However, a detailed inspection of the time-dependent results reveals many important findings. First and foremost, we find strong evidence for statistically significant temporal variations in all noise PSD parameters, many of which are directly correlated with satellite housekeeping data. Second, while the simple $1/f$ model appears to be an excellent fit for the LFI 70 GHz channel, there is evidence for additional correlated noise not described by a $1/f$ model in the 30 and 44 GHz channels, including within the primary science frequency range of 0.1--1 Hz. (Abridged)

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arXiv2022

Improved limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio using BICEP and Planck

We present constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r using a combination of BICEP/Keck 2018 and Planck PR4 data allowing us to fit for r consistently with the six parameters of the $Λ$CDM model without fixing any of them. In particular, we are able to derive a constraint on the reionization optical depth $τ$ and thus propagate its uncertainty onto the posterior distribution for r. While Planck sensitivity to r is no longer comparable with ground-based measurements, combining Planck with BK18 and BAO gives results consistent with r = 0 and tightens the constraint to r < 0.032.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Polarization and variability of compact sources measured in Planck time-ordered data

This paper introduces a new Planck Catalog of Polarized and Variable Compact Sources (PCCS-PV) comprising 153 sources, the majority of which are extragalactic. The data include both the total flux density and linear polarization measured by Planck with frequency coverage from 30 to 353 GHz, and temporal spacing ranging from days to years. We classify most sources as beamed, extragalactic radio sources; the catalog also includes several radio galaxies, Seyfert galaxies, and Galactic and Magellanic Cloud sources, including H IIi regions and planetary nebulae. An advanced extraction method applied directly to the multifrequency Planck time-ordered data, rather than the mission sky maps, was developed to allow an assessment of the variability of polarized sources. Our analysis of the time-ordered data from the Planck mission, tod2flux, allowed us to catalog the time-varying emission and polarization properties for these sources at the full range of polarized frequencies employed by Planck, 30 to 353 GHz. PCCS-PV provides the time- and frequency-dependent, polarized flux densities for all 153 sources. To illustrate some potential applications of the PCCS- PV, we conducted preliminary comparisons of our measurements of selected sources with published data from other astronomical instruments. In summary, we find general agreement between the Planck and the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) polarization measurements as well as with the Metsähovi 37 GHz values at closely similar epochs. These combined measurements also show the value of PCCS-PV results and the PCCS2 catalog for filling in missing spectral (or temporal) coverage and helping to define the spectral energy distributions of extragalactic sources. In turn, these results provide useful clues as to the physical properties of the sources.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

From BeyondPlanck to Cosmoglobe: Preliminary $\mathit{WMAP}$ $\mathit Q$-band analysis

We present the first application of the Cosmoglobe analysis framework by analyzing 9-year $\mathit{WMAP}$ time-ordered observations using similar machinery as BeyondPlanck utilizes for $\mathit{Planck}$ LFI. We analyze only the $\mathit Q$-band (41 GHz) data and report on the low-level analysis process from uncalibrated time-ordered data to calibrated maps. Most of the existing BeyondPlanck pipeline may be reused for $\mathit{WMAP}$ analysis with minimal changes to the existing codebase. The main modification is the implementation of the same preconditioned biconjugate gradient mapmaker used by the $\mathit{WMAP}$ team. Producing a single $\mathit{WMAP}$ $\mathit Q$1-band sample requires 22 CPU-hrs, which is slightly more than the cost of a $\mathit{Planck}$ 44 GHz sample of 17 CPU-hrs; this demonstrates that full end-to-end Bayesian processing of the $\mathit{WMAP}$ data is computationally feasible. In general, our recovered maps are very similar to the maps released by the $\mathit{WMAP}$ team, although with two notable differences. In temperature we find a $\sim2\,\mathrm{μK}$ quadrupole difference that most likely is caused by different gain modeling, while in polarization we find a distinct $2.5\,\mathrm{μK}$ signal that has been previously called poorly-measured modes by the $\mathit{WMAP}$ team. In the Cosmoglobe processing, this pattern arises from temperature-to-polarization leakage from the coupling between the CMB Solar dipole, transmission imbalance, and sidelobes. No traces of this pattern are found in either the frequency map or TOD residual map, suggesting that the current processing has succeeded in modelling these poorly measured modes within the assumed parametric model by using $\mathit{Planck}$ information to break the sky-synchronous degeneracies inherent in the $\mathit{WMAP}$ scanning strategy.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck XII. Cosmological parameter constraints with end-to-end error propagation

We present cosmological parameter constraints as estimated using the Bayesian BeyondPlanck (BP) analysis framework. This method supports seamless end-to-end error propagation from raw time-ordered data to final cosmological parameters. As a first demonstration of the method, we analyze time-ordered Planck LFI observations, combined with selected external data (WMAP 33-61GHz, Planck HFI DR4 353 and 857GHz, and Haslam 408MHz) in the form of pixelized maps which are used to break critical astrophysical degeneracies. Overall, all results are generally in good agreement with previously reported values from Planck 2018 and WMAP, with the largest relative difference for any parameter of about 1 sigma when considering only temperature multipoles between 29<l<601. In cases where there are differences, we note that the BP results are generally slightly closer to the high-l HFI-dominated Planck 2018 results than previous analyses, suggesting slightly less tension between low and high multipoles. Using low-l polarization information from LFI and WMAP, we find a best-fit value of tau=0.066 +/- 0.013, which is higher than the low value of tau=0.051 +/- 0.006 derived from Planck 2018 and slightly lower than the value of 0.069 +/- 0.011 derived from joint analysis of official LFI and WMAP products. Most importantly, however, we find that the uncertainty derived in the BP processing is about 30% larger than when analyzing the official products, after taking into account the different sky coverage. We argue that this is due to marginalizing over a more complete model of instrumental and astrophysical parameters, and this results in both more reliable and more rigorously defined uncertainties. We find that about 2000 Monte Carlo samples are required to achieve robust convergence for low-resolution CMB covariance matrix with 225 independent modes.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

BeyondPlanck VII. Bayesian estimation of gain and absolute calibration for CMB experiments

We present a Bayesian calibration algorithm for CMB observations as implemented within the global end-to-end BeyondPlanck (BP) framework, and apply this to the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data. Following the most recent Planck analysis, we decompose the full time-dependent gain into a sum of three orthogonal components: One absolute calibration term, common to all detectors; one time-independent term that can vary between detectors; and one time-dependent component that is allowed to vary between one-hour pointing periods. Each term is then sampled conditionally on all other parameters in the global signal model through Gibbs sampling. The absolute calibration is sampled using only the orbital dipole as a reference source, while the two relative gain components are sampled using the full sky signal, including the orbital and Solar CMB dipoles, CMB fluctuations, and foreground contributions. We discuss various aspects of the data that influence gain estimation, including the dipole/polarization quadrupole degeneracy and anomalous jumps in the instrumental gain. Comparing our solution to previous pipelines, we find good agreement in general, with relative deviations of -0.67% (-0.84%) for 30 GHz, 0.12% (-0.04%) for 44 GHz and -0.03% (-0.64%) for 70 GHz, compared to Planck DR4 (Planck 2018). The deviations we find are within expected error bounds, and we attribute them to differences in data usage and general approach between the pipelines. In particular, the BP calibration is performed globally, resulting in better inter-frequency consistency. Additionally, WMAP observations are used actively in the BP analysis, which breaks degeneracies in the Planck data set and results in better agreement with WMAP. Although our presentation and algorithm are currently oriented toward LFI processing, the procedure is fully generalizable to other experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗