Planck 2013 results. XII. Diffuse component separation
Publication date: 29 October 2014
Authors: Planck Collaboration
Journal: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume: 571, November 2014
Page: A12
Year: 2014
Copyright: ESO, 2014
Planck has produced detailed all-sky observations over nine frequency bands between 30 and 857 GHz. These observations allow robust reconstruction of the primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations over nearly the full sky, as well as new constraints on Galactic foregrounds, including thermal dust and line emission from molecular carbon monoxide (CO). This paper describes the component separation framework adopted by Planck for many cosmological analyses, including CMB power spectrum determination and likelihood construction on large angular scales, studies of primordial non-Gaussianity and statistical isotropy, the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, gravitational lensing, and searches for topological defects. We test four foreground-cleaned CMB maps derived using qualitatively different component separation algorithms. The quality of our reconstructions is evaluated through detailed simulations and internal comparisons, and shown through various tests to be internally consistent and robust for CMB power spectrum and cosmological parameter estimation up to ℓ = 2000. The parameter constraints on ΛCDM cosmologies derived from these maps are consistent with those presented in the cross-spectrum based Planck likelihood analysis. We choose two of the CMB maps for specific scientific goals. We also present maps and frequency spectra of the Galactic low-frequency, CO, and thermal dust emission. The component maps are found to provide a faithful representation of the sky, as evaluated by simulations, with the largest bias seen in the CO component at 3%. For the low-frequency component, the spectral index varies widely over the sky, ranging from about β = -4 to -2.
--- Remainder of abstract truncated due to character limitations ---