Planck/LFI Pipeline -- The Demonstration Model

LFI is one of the two instruments installed on board Planck, the M3 mission of the ESA Horizon 2000+ program, the main goal of which is to produce maps of the CAM (Cosmic Microwave Background) with an unprecedented combination of angular resolution, sensitivity, spatial coverage, and frequency range. The Demonstration Model (DM) is the second version of the LFI DPC pipeline, built on top of the BBM (Bread-Board Model), released in July 2002. The DM has been integrated at DPC using the Process Coordinator and FITS files for standard data exchange; in the future, instead of using FITS files; the pipeline will be compliant with the Planck DAM (Data Management Component) standard. The DM goal is to demonstrate that the current pipeline is able to handle the foreseen LFI data flow and to perform an end-to-end processing of the data, from telemetry to the production of the scientific results. The DM development was mainly concentrated on understanding and removing systematic effects; at the moment the pipeline is able to detect and remove all systematic effects which are understood and modeled within the Planck simulation pipeline, such as thermal fluctuations, 1/f noise; the side-lobe effects, beam distortion, and so on.