Planck pre-launch status: Design and description of the Low Frequency Instrument

By M. Bersanelli, N. Mandolesi, R. C. Butler, A. Mennella, F. Villa, B. Aja, E. Artal, E. Artina, C. Baccigalupi, M. Balasini and 103 more. 2010

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In this paper we present the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI), designed and developed as part of the Planck space mission, the ESA program dedicated to precision imaging of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Planck-LFI will observe the full sky in intensity and polarisation in three frequency bands centred at 30, 44 and 70 GHz, while higher frequencies (100-850 GHz) will be covered by the HFI instrument. The LFI is an array of microwave radiometers based on state-of-the-art Indium Phosphide cryogenic HEMT amplifiers implemented in a differential system using blackbody loads as reference signals. The front-end is cooled to 20K for optimal sensitivity and the reference loads are cooled to 4K to minimise low frequency noise. We provide an overview of the LFI, discuss the leading scientific requirements and describe the design solutions adopted for the various hardware subsystems. The main drivers of the radiometric, optical and thermal design are discussed, including the stringent requirements on sensitivity, stability, and rejection of systematic effects. Further details on the key instrument units and the results of ground calibration are provided in a set of companion papers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/46d3569d1607ca8f4c6d1ac146b368cffcee0d15

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Planck intermediate results. XIX. An overview of the polarized thermal emission from Galactic dust (2014, background): “At the lowest frequencies, from the 30 GHz to 70 GHz bands of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI, Bersanelli et al. 2010), synchrotron emission dominates; at the highest frequencies, from the 217 GHz to 857 GHz bands of the High Frequency Instrument (HFI, Lamarre et al. 2010), thermal…”
Planck Pre-Launch Status: The Planck Mission (2010, methodology): “A detailed description of the LFI design and performance as measured on the ground are included in Bersanelli et al. (2010), Mennella et al. (2010), and other papers included in this issue.”
Planck intermediate results: V. Pressure profiles of galaxy clusters from the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (2012, unknown): “The Low Frequency Instrument (LFI; Mandolesi et al. 2010; Bersanelli et al. 2010; Mennella et al. 2011) We used the full sky maps in the nine Planck frequency bands provided in  (Górski et al. 2005) N side = 2048 full resolution.”
Planck pre-launch status: The HFI instrument, from specification to actual performance (2010, methodology): “The sources of parasitic radiation are (i) the telescope, its baffle and all objects inside the baffle cavity, including the focal plane units of LFI and HFI; and (ii) the elements of the optical chain ensuring the coupling between the bolometers and the telescope.”
Simultaneous Planck, Swift, and Fermi observations of X-ray and γ-ray selected blazars (2011, background): “The Low Frequency Instrument (LFI; Mandolesi et al. 2010; Bersanelli et al. 2010; Mennella, A. et al. 2011) covers the 30, 44, and 70 GHz bands with amplifiers cooled to 20 K.”