Planck 2015 results. XII. Full Focal Plane simulations

TL;DR

The paper details the creation of extensive simulations of the Planck 2015 mission data, including noise and CMB, to validate analysis methods and quantify uncertainties, supporting the mission's scientific results.

Contribution

It introduces the largest suite of Planck mission simulations, including 10 fiducial and 10,000 Monte Carlo realizations, for validation and bias correction of data analysis.

Findings

Generated 18144 maps for fiducial realizations

Produced about 1 million maps for Monte Carlo noise simulations

Enabled validation and bias removal in Planck data analysis

Abstract

We present the 8th Full Focal Plane simulation set (FFP8), deployed in support of the Planck 2015 results. FFP8 consists of 10 fiducial mission realizations reduced to 18144 maps, together with the most massive suite of Monte Carlo realizations of instrument noise and CMB ever generated, comprising $10^4$ mission realizations reduced to about $10^6$ maps. The resulting maps incorporate the dominant instrumental, scanning, and data analysis effects; remaining subdominant effects will be included in future updates. Generated at a cost of some 25 million CPU-hours spread across multiple high-performance-computing (HPC) platforms, FFP8 is used for the validation and verification of analysis algorithms, as well as their implementations, and for removing biases from and quantifying uncertainties in the results of analyses of the real data.