Simulating instrumental systematics of Cosmic Microwave Background experiments with s4cmb

TL;DR

This paper introduces s4cmb, a Python package that simulates raw time-domain data for CMB experiments, including instrumental systematics, to aid in data analysis, experiment design, and contamination assessment.

Contribution

The paper presents s4cmb, a novel tool for realistic simulation of instrumental systematics in CMB experiments, enhancing data analysis and experiment planning.

Findings

Enables realistic simulation of CMB instrumental systematics

Assists in contamination assessment and experiment design

Improves the development of data analysis methods

Abstract

The observation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies is one of the key probes of physical cosmology. The weak nature of this signal has driven the construction of increasingly complex and sensitive experiments observing the sky at multiple frequencies with thousands of polarization sensitive detectors. Given the high sensitivity of such experiments, instrumental systematic effects can become the limiting factor towards the full scientific exploitation of their data. In this paper we present s4cmb (Systematics for CMB), a Python package designed to simulate raw data streams in time domain of modern CMB experiments based on bolometric technology, and to inject in these realistic instrumental systematics effects. The aim of the package is to help assessing the contamination due to instrumental systematic effects on real data, to guide the design of future instruments, as well as to increase the realism of simulated data sets required in the development of accurate data analysis methods.