[FPSPACE] The Scientific Programme of Planck

[LARRY KLAES]

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0604069

From: Jan Tauber [view email]

Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 17:35:31 GMT   (9224kb)

The Scientific Programme of Planck

Authors: The Planck Collaboration

Comments: Also available for direct download from this http URL

Report-no: ESA-SCI(2005)1

For 40 years, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has been the most 
important source of information about the geometry and contents of the 
Universe. Even so, only a small fraction of the information available in the 
CMB has been extracted to date. Planck, the third space CMB mission after 
COBE and WMAP, is designed to extract essentially all of the information in 
the CMB temperature anisotropies. Planck will also measure to high accuracy 
the polarization of CMB anisotropies, which encodes not only a wealth of 
cosmological information but also provides a unique probe of the thermal 
history of the Universe during the time when the first stars and galaxies 
formed. Polarization measurements may also detect the signature of a 
stochastic background of gravitational waves generated during inflation, 
10^(-35) s after the Big Bang. This book describes the expected scientific 
output of the Planck mission, both cosmological and non-cosmological. 
Chapter 1 summarizes the experimental concept and the operation of the 
satellite. Chapter 2 covers the core cosmological science of the mission, 
describing the measurements that Planck will make, what we expect to learn 
from them about the geometry and contents of the Universe and about 
fundamental physics, and the combination of CMB data with other data to 
provide additional insights. Although the primary goal of Planck is 
cosmology, it will survey the whole sky with an unprecedented combination of 
frequency coverage, angular resolution, and sensitivity, providing data 
valuable for a broad range of astrophysics. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 describe 
non-cosmological astrophysical uses of the Planck data. This book can also 
be downloaded directly from this http URL .

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=Planck

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604069