Planck 2013 results. XXXI. Consistency of the Planck data

Abstract

The Planck design and scanning strategy provide many levels of redundancy that can be exploited to provide tests of internal consistency. One of the most important is the comparison of the 70 GHz (amplifier) and 100 GHz (bolometer) channels. Based on different instrument technologies, with feeds located differently in the focal plane, analysed independently by different teams using different software, and near the minimum of diffuse foreground emission, these channels are in effect two different experiments. The 143 GHz channel has the lowest noise level on Planck, and is near the minimum of unresolved foreground emission. In this paper, we analyse the level of consistency achieved in the 2013 Planck data. We concentrate on comparisons between the 70, 100, and 143 GHz channel maps and power spectra, particularly over the angular scales of the first and second acoustic peaks, on maps masked for diffuse Galactic emission and for strong unresolved sources. Difference maps covering angular scales from 8° to 15′ are consistent with noise, and show no evidence of cosmic microwave background structure. Including small but important corrections for unresolved-source residuals, we demonstrate agreement (measured by deviation of the ratio from unity) between 70 and 100 GHz power spectra averaged over 70 ≤ ℓ ≤ 390 at the 0.8% level, and agreement between 143 and 100 GHz power spectra of 0.4% over the same ℓ range. These values are within and consistent with the overall uncertainties in calibration given in the Planck 2013 results. We also present results based on the 2013 likelihood analysis showing consistency at the 0.35% between the 100, 143, and 217 GHz power spectra. We analyse calibration procedures and beams to determine what fraction of these differences can be accounted for by known approximations or systematicerrors that could be controlled even better in the future, reducing uncertainties still further. Several possible small improvements are described. Subsequent analysis of the beams quantifies the importance of asymmetry in the near sidelobes, which was not fully accounted for initially, affecting the 70/100 ratio. Correcting for this, the 70, 100, and 143 GHz power spectra agree to 0.4% over the first two acoustic peaks. The likelihood analysis that produced the 2013 cosmological parameters incorporated uncertainties larger than this. We show explicitly that correction of the missing near sidelobe power in the HFI channels would result in shifts in the posterior distributions of parameters of less than 0.3σ except for As, the amplitude of the primordial curvature perturbations at 0.05 Mpc-1, which changes by about 1σ. We extend these comparisons to include the sky maps from the complete nine-year mission of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and find a roughly 2% difference between the Planck and WMAP power spectra in the region of the first acoustic peak.

Reproduced with permission from Astronomy & Astrophysics, © ESO 2014