Abstract
The European Space Agency's Planck satellite, dedicated
to studying the early Universe and its subsequent
evolution, was launched 14 May 2009 and has been scanning
the microwave and submillimetre sky continuously since 12
August 2009. In March 2013, ESA and the Planck
Collaboration released the initial cosmology products
based on the first 15.5?months of Planck data, along with
a set of scientific and technical papers and a web-based
explanatory supplement. This paper gives an overview of
the mission and its performance, the processing,
analysis, and characteristics of the data, the scientific
results, and the science data products and papers in the
release. The science products include maps of the cosmic
microwave background (CMB) and diffuse extragalactic
foregrounds, a catalogue of compact Galactic and
extragalactic sources, and a list of sources detected
through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. The likelihood code
used to assess cosmological models against the Planck
data and a lensing likelihood are described. Scientific
results include robust support for the standard
six-parameter ?CDM model of cosmology and improved
measurements of its parameters, including a highly
significant deviation from scale invariance of the
primordial power spectrum. The Planck values for these
parameters and others derived from them are significantly
different from those previously determined. Several
large-scale anomalies in the temperature distribution of
the CMB, first detected by WMAP, are confirmed with
higher confidence. Planck sets new limits on the number
and mass of neutrinos, and has measured gravitational
lensing of CMB anisotropies at greater than 25s. Planck
finds no evidence for non-Gaussianity in the CMB.
Planck's results agree well with results from the
measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations. Planck
finds a lower Hubble constant than found in some more
local measures. Some tension is also present between the
amplitude of matter fluctuations (s8) derived from CMB
data and that derived from Sunyaev-Zeldovich data. The
Planck and WMAP power spectra are offset from each other
by an average level of about 2% around the first acoustic
peak. Analysis of Planck polarization data is not yet
mature, therefore polarization results are not released,
although the robust detection of E-mode polarization
around CMB hot and cold spots is shown graphically.
Original language | English |
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Article number | A1 |
Number of pages | 48 |
Journal | Astronomy and Astrophysics |
Volume | 571 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- cosmology
- cosmic background radiation
- space vehicles
- instrumentation