A simulation pipeline for the Planck mission

Abstract

We describe an assembly of numerical tools to model the output data of the Planck satellite (Tauber 2004, Adv. Space Res., 34, 491). These start with the generation of a CMB sky in a chosen cosmology, add in various foreground sources, convolve the sky signal with arbitrary, even non-symmetric and polarised beam patterns, derive the time-ordered data streams measured by the detectors depending on the chosen satellite-scanning strategy, and include noise signals for the individual detectors and electronic systems. The simulation products are needed to develop, verify, optimise, and characterise the accuracy and performance of all data processing and scientific analysis steps of the Planck mission, including data handling, data integrity checking, calibration, map making, physical component separation, and power spectrum estimation. In addition, the simulations allow detailed studies of the impact of many stochastic and systematic effects on the scientific results. Efficient implementation of the simulation allows extended statistics of signal variances and co-variances to be built up. Although being developed specifically for the Planck mission, it is expected that the framework being employed, as well as most of the simulation tools, will be of use for other experiments and for CMB-related science in general.