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SES4U
Thomas Smith
28/09/2014
Primordial Waves and Flatness: An Analysis of the Planck Satellite
General Description and Scientific Goals:
The Planck Satellite is a space observatory orbiting at the L2 Lagrange Point
(1,500,00 km) designed to answer key cosmological questions including:
observation and analysis of anisotropies in the CMB( Cosmic Microwave
Background); specifically intensity and polarization which has recently [4] had
disheartening effects on the possibility of gravitational waves form BICEP2; these
results were part of the second main goal of the project; that of analyzing infrared
and radio frequency sources (Collaboration, Planck, 2009). For motivation a direct
quotation from the Collaboration is most apt: CMB measurements with high
angular resolution and sensitivity are required to determine the initial conditions for
structure evolution, the origin of primordial uctuations, the existence of topological
defects, and the nature and amount of dark matter. (Collaboration, Planck, 2009).
Development history is also most succinctly phrased in the report as: ESA released
an Announcement of Opportunity for Planck instruments in October 1997.Two
proposals were received: the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI, an array of receivers
based on HEMT amplifiers, covering the frequency range 30100 GHz, and operated
at a temperature of 20 K), led by N. Mandolesi (INAF, Bologna); and the High
Frequency Instrument (HFI, an array of receivers based on bolometers covering the
frequency range 100857 GHz, and operated at a temperature of 0.1 K), led by J. L.
Puget (IAS, Orsay). After detailed review by independent scientists, both proposals
were accepted by ESA in February 1999. The telescope mirrors will be provided by
ESA and a Consortium of Danish institutes (referred to as DK-Planck) led by H. U.
Norgaard-Nielsen (DSRI, Copenhagen) (Collaboration, Planck, 2009).
Canada plays a specific role in the LFI as outlined in [1] as: Members of the
Canadian LFI team have been involved with the planning of the Planck science
program. They are active members of the Planck core team, whose task is to deliver
the final data to the Planck consortium and wider scientific community. Work they
have been involved in, for example, includes an effort to understand the
recombination history of the universe to high precision and modelling systematics in
the CMB polarization maps which Planck will produce. Canadian team members, led
by Russ Taylor, are also involved in the Planck DRAO Deep Fields project, which
consists of high resolution observations of the polarized astrophysical foregrounds
at high galactic latitude. Since a key science goal of Planck is to measure the CMB
polarization at high precision, it is necessary to have a good understanding of

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polarized foregrounds for which this project will be important (Canadian LFI Team,
2014).
Applications of Planck to Areas of Fundamental Research:
Due to space constraints this section will consist of condensed text from the
Planck report and brief comments from the publicly available paper only applicable
to a single area of research: inationary cosmology and gravitational waves.
Planck and Ination: The report offers a clear motivation for inationary ideas
as follows: The origin of the uctuations that grew to make clusters, galaxies and
all of the other structure in our Universe poses a fundamental problem/ It is easy to
see why exotic physics needs to be invoked: a map of the CMB temperature
anisotropies provides a snapshot of the uctuations at the time of recombination,
when the Universe was only tr 400,000 years old. However, the distance that light
could have travelled within this timescale, L ctr, would subtend an angle of only
about a degree on the sky/the uctuations could not, according to this naive
argument, have been in causal contact at the time of recombination (Collaboration,
Planck, 2009). The argument then follows that, following the Freidman equation, a
state of matter with negative pressure would result in an exponential expansion of
space-time accounting for the atness of space. Planck could make contact with this
area of physics through the following: A detection of a large-angle signal with a
thermal spectrum would provide a smoking-gun signature of a stochastic
background of gravitational waves. In models of ination, the amplitude of the Bmode of polarization is a direct measure of the inationary energy scale, and so
detection would provide a firm observational link with physics of the early Universe
(Collaboration, Planck, 2009). They provide a clear description of a decomposition of
the polarization map into E and B modes as spherical harmonics, the latter of which
being a direct prediction of inationary theory.
This has led to the disheartening effect of ruining the BICEP2 data by showing
a very strong correlation between predictions from a dust model and B-modes
versus that of gravitational waves as shown in the following graphs:
Figure 1: B-Mode Polarization as a function of Radius with BICEP2 data
outlined

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Figure 2: Correlation of B-modes as a function of Multipole Moment

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To see why this damaging requires a little explanation: The light-blue

rectangles are what Planck actually sees and attributes to dust. The black line is the
theoretical prediction for what you would see from gravitational waves with the
amplitude claimed by BICEP2. As is clear, they match very well. That is: the BICEP2
signal is apparently well-explained by dust. Multipole moments are the coefficients
in a spherical harmonic expansion of an inverse radi varying potential (see Classical
Electrodynamics by Julian Schwinger). Correlation functions are exactly what their
name implies: a measure of the relation of an output to input parameters. A final
test of BICEP2 is given in [4] as:
Figure 3: Relative Power of Signal vs Frequency

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With the black dotted line being the prediction due to dust (Planck Collaboration,
2014).
Clearly, the Planck satellite has an interesting and fascinating ability to shed light on
our most fundamental questions in science and, finally, offer constraints on the
plethora of ideas coming out of theoretical physics, its relation to better lives on
Earth mostly being given by its impacts on theoretical ideas at the cutting edge of
physics which may create giant benefits e.g. its possible constraints on string theory
models and the paper [3] through possibly making Ads/CFT intractable.

Bibliography
All figures taken from [4]
Canadian LFI Team, 2014. Canadian LFI Team. [Online]
Available at: http://www.astro.ubc.ca/Planck/index.html
[Accessed 28 09 2014]. [1]
Collaboration, Planck, 2009. Planck: The Scientific Programme, s.l.: European
Science Agency. [2]
Jeffrey Wouda, 2012. Holographic Superconductors, s.l.: University of Amsterdam.
[3]
Planck Collaboration, 2014. Planck intermediate results. XXX. The angular power
spectrum of polarized dust emission at intermediate and high Galactic latitudes, s.l.:
ArXiv, [4]