BeyondPlanck I. Global Bayesian analysis of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument data

Abstract: We describe the BeyondPlanck project in terms of motivation, methodology and main products, and provide a guide to a set of companion papers that describe each result in fuller detail. We implement a complete end-to-end Bayesian analysis framework for the Planck LFI observations. The primary product is a full joint posterior distribution $P(\omega|d)$, where $\omega$ represents the set of all free instrumental, astrophysical, and cosmological parameters. Notable advantages of this approach are seamless end-to-end propagation of uncertainties; accurate modeling of both astrophysical and instrumental effects in the most natural basis for each uncertain quantity; optimized computational costs with little or no need for intermediate human interaction between various analysis steps; and a complete overview of the entire analysis process within one single framework. We focus in particular on low-$\ell$ CMB polarization reconstruction with Planck LFI. We identify several important new effects that have not been accounted for in previous pipelines, including gain over-smoothing and time-variable and non-$1/f$ correlated noise in the 30 and 44 GHz channels. We find that all results are consistent with the $\Lambda$CDM model, and we constrain the reionization optical depth to $\tau=0.066\pm0.013$, with a low-resolution $\chi^2$ probability-to-exceed of 32%. This uncertainty is about 30% larger than the official pipelines, arising from taking into account a more complete instrumental model. The marginal CMB Solar dipole amplitude is $3362.7\pm1.4\mu\mathrm{K}$, where the error bar is derived directly from the posterior distribution without the need of any ad-hoc instrumental corrections. We are currently not aware of any significant unmodelled systematic effects remaining in the Planck LFI data, and, for the first time, the 44 GHz channel is fully exploited. (Abridged.)