Planck 2013 results. VII. HFI time response and beams

TL;DR

This paper details the characterization of the Planck HFI instrument's effective beams and window functions, including error estimation, to improve the accuracy of CMB power spectrum measurements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the HFI beams, including measurement, modeling, and error estimation, enhancing the precision of Planck's CMB data analysis.

Findings

Main beam solid angles determined to better than 0.5%

Near sidelobes limited to about 0.1% of total solid angle

Total error in beam window functions below 1% at 100GHz

Abstract

This paper characterizes the effective beams,the effective beam window functions and the associated errors for the Planck HFI detectors. The effective beam is the angular response including the effect of the optics,detectors,data processing and the scan strategy. The window function is the representation of this beam in the harmonic domain which is required to recover an unbiased measurement of the CMB angular power spectrum. The HFI is a scanning instrument and its effective beams are the convolution of: (a) the optical response of the telescope and feeds;(b)the processing of the time-ordered data and deconvolution of the bolometric and electronic time response; and (c) the merging of several surveys to produce maps. The time response functions are measured using observations of Jupiter and Saturn and by minimizing survey difference residuals. The scanning beam is the post-deconvolution angular response of the instrument, and is characterized with observations of Mars. The main beam solid angles are determined to better than 0.5% at each HFI frequency band. Observations of Jupiter and Saturn limit near sidelobes (within 5deg) to about 0.1% of the total solid angle. Time response residuals remain as long tails in the scanning beams, but contribute less than 0.1% of the total. The bias and uncertainty in the beam products are estimated using ensembles of simulated planet observations that include the impact of instrumental noise and known systematic effects.The correlation structure of these ensembles is well-described by five error eigenmodes that are sub-dominant to sample variance and instrumental noise in the harmonic domain. A suite of consistency tests provide confidence that the error model represents a sufficient description of the data. The total error in the effective beam window functions is below 1% at 100GHz up to ell~1500$,and below 0.5% at 143 and 217GHz up to ~2000.