The PLANCK project at UGR
The University of Granada (UGR) was financially and scientifically involved in the project:
- Financially, UGR funded the construction of a
Current Pre-Regulator for the
High Frequency Instrument (HFI) of the Planck satellite.
- The scientific interests of UGR focus on:
- Prof. E. Battaner is co-investigator of the HFI, "Planck Scientist", principal
investigator of
the project Constraints on primordial magnetic fields within the WG4 and Core Team Member.
The PLANCK project
The Planck project was selected in 1996 as third medium sized mission
in the ESA Horizon 2000 programme. The aim is to map the whole sky
in the range 30-900 GHz with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, and,
remarkably, to perform a high precision polarimetry survey of the whole sky.
The Planck satellite was successfully launched on 14 May 2009.
These data will reveal details of the distribution and topology of the
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which reflect fundamental properties
of the Universe in its primordial status.
The resolution of Planck data will be better than 10 arcminutes, with a
sensitivity of a few microK.
The data will be collected by a Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) and a High
Frequency Instrument (HFI), whose ranges are about 30-70 GHz and
100-860 GHz respectively.
All the theories of structure formation in the Universe predict some
anisotropy of the CMB, which depends on the geometry of the Universe and
on the basic elements of matter. In this context, the Planck data will be
extremely useful to investigate:
- The production of primordial density fluctuations and the existence
of an inflationary epoch in the very early Universe.
- The classes of density perturbations in the early Universe and the
spectral index of density fluctuations.
- The existence of primordial gravity waves.
- The nature of Dark Matter, the baryonic contribution to the mean
density of the Universe and the Neutrino's contribution.
- Closeby objects contribution to the CMB.
Other related links are:
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