Cosmological parameters after WMAP5: forecasts for Planck and future galaxy surveys

TL;DR

This paper forecasts how the Planck satellite and future galaxy surveys will improve measurements of cosmological parameters, highlighting the importance of data analysis specifics and synergies between different observational methods.

Contribution

It analyzes the impact of data analysis choices on Planck's parameter constraints and explores how combining Planck data with galaxy surveys enhances cosmological parameter estimation.

Findings

Planck will improve constraints on most parameters by 3-4 times.

Tensor-to-scalar ratio r constrained by a factor of 9.

Combining Planck with galaxy surveys breaks parameter degeneracies.

Abstract

The Planck satellite is expected to improve the measurement of most cosmological parameters by several factors with respect to current WMAP results. The actual performance may depend upon various aspects of the data analysis. In this paper we analyse the impact of specifics of the data analysis on the actual final results. We also explore the synergies in combining Planck results with future galaxy surveys. We find that Planck will improve constraints on most cosmological parameters by a factor 3-4 and on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r by a factor 9. Also inflationary parameters, like r, n_s and n_run, are no longer degenerate. The tensor spectral index, however, is little constrained. A combination of the 70 to 143 GHz channels will contain ~90% of all possible information, with 143 GHz polarisation information carrying about half of the constraining power on r. Also, the error on r degrades by a factor 2 if no B modes are included in the analysis. High-l temperature information is essential for determination of n_s and \Omega_b, while improving noise properties increase the l-range where Planck would be cosmic variance limited in polarisation, with a significant improvement on the determination of r, \tau and A_s. However, a sub-percent difference in the FWHM used in the data analysis with respect to the one in the map will result in a bias for several parameters. Finally, Planck will greatly help future missions like LSST and CIP reach their potentials by providing tight constraints on parameters like n_s and n_run. Considering Planck together with these probes will help in breaking degeneracies between \Omega_K and \Omega_\Lambda or \Omega_dm and f_\nu, resulting in improvements of several factors in the error associated to these parameters.