THE PLANCK SKY MODEL
Welcome to the PSM website!
The project
The Planck Sky Model (PSM) is a complete and versatile set of programs and data, to be used for the simulation or the prediction of sky emission in the frequency range of typical CMB experiments, and in particular of the upcoming Planck sky mission. It has originally been developed as part of the activities of Planck component separation Working Group (or 'Working Group 2' - WG2), and of the ADAMIS team at APC.
The PSM software is developed with two main objectives in mind:
- The primary objective is the ability to simulate plausible sky emission maps, to be used as inputs for the development and testing of data processing and analysis techniques. It includes a basic set of tools to simulate observations taken with a particular instrument.
- The second objective is the availability of a tool which summarizes our present knowledge of the GHz sky. For this, the PSM is meant to allow predicting the sky emission in any direction of the sky, and at any frequency in the GHz range, based on an interpretation of presently existing and publically available data sets.
The model has has been developed mostly by members of the Planck collaboration as a simulation tool for Planck activities. The current version is "pre-launch", with no Planck observation used to model sky emission. There is, hence, no guaranteee that simulated maps obtained with the PSM will be fully compatible with Planck observations. Updating the model on the basis of Planck observations is one of the projects of the Planck collaboration (Project 1.11: Planck Sky Model ).
The software
The software is developed mostly in the IDL programming language. It uses the HEALPix sky-pixellisation package (with calls to C++ binaries), the astron and mpfit libraries, and uses CAMB for specific CMB models. The package comes as a collection of component-specific simulation codes put together by driver routines, automating fastidious tasks like parameter processing and component map coaddition.
The PSM is being continuously developed. Visit the web site regularly for releases of simulation products and of the software package.
The people
Global coordination and scientific responsibility
- Jacques Delabrouille and Gianfranco de Zotti.
Package coordination
- Integration: Jacques Delabrouille
- CMB: Jacques Delabrouille
- SZ effects: Jean-Baptiste Melin
- Galactic emission: Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes
- Point sources: Gianfranco de Zotti (since 2011) and Joaquin Gonzalez-Nuevo (before 2011)
Main developers and contributors
The following people have contributed to the PSM project so far:
- Mark Ashdown, Jonathan Aumont, Carlo Baccigalupi, Anthony Banday, Soumen Basak, Jean-Philippe Bernard, Marc Betoule, François Bouchet, Guillaume Castex, Dave Clements, Antonio Da Silva, Gianfranco De Zotti, Jacques Delabrouille, Clive Dickinson, Fabrice Dodu, Klaus Dolag, Franz Elsner, Lauranne Fauvet, Gilles Faÿ, Giovanna Giardino, Joaquin Gonzalez-Nuevo, Maude le Jeune, Samuel Leach, Julien Lesgourgues, Michele Liguori, Juan Macias, Marcella Massardi, Sabino Matarrese, Pasquale Mazzotta, Jean-Baptiste Melin, Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes, Ludovic Montier, Sylvain Mottet, Roberta Paladini, Bruce Partridge, Rocco Piffaretti, Gary Prézeau, Simon Prunet, Sara Ricciardi, Matthieu Roman, Bjorn Schaefer, Luigi Toffolatti.
Acknowledgements
- The PSM project has benefitted from useful discussions with: François Boulanger, Rodney Davis, François-Xavier Désert, Hans-Kristian Eriksen, Frode Hansen, Lauro Moscardini, Francesca Perrotta, Stephen Serjeant, Grazia Umana, Benjamin Wandelt.
Beta-testers
- We thank the beta-testers and users of the PSM software who made useful suggestions and provided feedback about the code and its outputs, and in particular Charmaine Armitage, Julian Borrill, Jason Dick, Joanna Dunkley, Frédéric Guilloux, Martin Reinecke, Mathieu Remazeilles, Graça Rocha.
Publications
- Main PSM paper (draft version v1.74)
- pdf (10.1 MB)
Pre-launch version Releases
The following releases of the PSM are available for download. The status specifies whether the release is RESTRICTED to the Planck collaboration, or OPEN to the scientific community at large. Check the appropriate release page for additional information about each particular release: general comments, limitation and known bugs, specific recommendations.
The OPEN releases are made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation (version 3 of the license, or any later version at the user option).
The current RECOMMENDED VERSION is v1.7.4.
| Date | Release page | Comments | Download user manual in pdf format  | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 March 2012 | v1.7.5 | This is a minor update of v1.7.4. It tags specifically the version used for the observation of FFP4 simulations in average FFP4 frequency bands. The available RIMOs have been modified (temporarily; they probably need a complete revision). A new feature is a model of galactic magnetic field according to Fauvet et al. 2011, that can be used to generate templates of polarised galactic emission. | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_5.pdf | RESTRICTED |
| 16 March 2012 | v1.7.4 | Version essentially fixing bugs introduced in version 1.7.3: Corrected dust polarisation amplitude, fixed bugs for Gaussian CMB (which has been improved and tested more thoroughly). Also expanded the documentation, implemented relativistic SZ effect included for some SZ models, and updated the radio-frequency part of ultra-compact HII regions. Used for generating v2 of the FFP4 diffuse foregrounds. | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_4.pdf | RESTRICTED |
| 04 December 2011 | v1.7.3 | Version updated and released specifically for Planck FFP4 simulations. Not recommended (tested only for very limited configurations). | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_3.pdf | RESTRICTED |
| 28 September 2011 | v1.7.2 | This version is a minor update of v1.7.1. | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_2.pdf | RESTRICTED |
| 13 September 2011 | v1.7.1 | This version updates some templates for the Galaxy, corrects high multipole galactic emission and fixes a few minor bugs in v1.7.0-beta. | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_1.pdf | RESTRICTED |
| 25 August 2011 | v1.7.0-beta | This version is a major revision of the PSM, released internally to the Planck collaboration for beta-testing. | PSM_user_manual_v1_7_0-beta.pdf | RESTRICTED |