PI: Yun Wang / California Institute of Technology
The observed cosmic acceleration remains a mystery twenty-five years after its discovery. Illuminating its unknown cause, “Dark Energy”, is of fundamental importance in cosmology, and one of the science objectives of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Galaxy Redshift Survey (GRS), a powerful cosmological probe, is one of the three observational probes of dark energy on Roman. We propose to be the Project Infrastructure Team (PIT) for the Roman GRS (a survey to be defined in an open community process). We will develop and maintain the infrastructure tools and capabilities needed to address the mission objectives for the Roman GRS and to support Community Science Collaborations. We plan to work closely with the Roman Project, and partner with the Science Centers, providing all necessary support to ensure mission success.
Our program will have 15 deliverables, which require the execution of 13 tasks. These are designed to simulate the data, model and optimize the observing program, model systematic errors and develop methods to mitigate them, and measure compressed statistics including the 2-point correlation function and power spectrum, as well as higher-order statistics uniquely enabled by Roman GRS’s high galaxy number density. Our deliverables include simulated and value-added galaxy catalogs, covariance matrices, and a set of ready-to-apply models calculated using different cutting-edge approaches. Our infrastructure work will enable robust measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Redshift Space Distortions (RSD), meeting the Roman science objectives for the GRS. Our modular approach allows the community to complement and extend this work in further science directions. This work needs to start as soon as possible to be ready for the Roman data. Our PIT will coordinate work with the Weak Lensing and Cluster Growth & Type Ia Supernovae PITs to maximize Roman science.
Our team has all of the requisite expertise and commitment. The PI was the BAO/RSD lead on the Roman/WFIRST High Latitude Cosmology Science Investigation Team. She is the Deputy Coordinator of the Euclid Galaxy Clustering Science Working Group, and the author of a graduate textbook on dark energy. The team includes leaders from all of the current and planned ground-based GRS (BOSS/eBOSS/HETDEX/PFS/DESI: Padmanabhan, Percival, Ross, Saito, Samushia, Seo, Slepian, Wechsler), the Euclid mission (Percival, Wang), and the Rubin Observatory’s LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (Heitmann, Wechsler). On our team are world-leading experts on the design and data analysis of GRS (Padmanabhan, Percival, Ross, Samushia, Seo, Wang), space-based slitless spectroscopy analogous to that planned for Roman (Brammer, Colbert, Scarlata, Teplitz, Walth), and calibration (Appleton, Brammer, Padmanabhan). Our team brings extraordinary expertise both in breath and depth, spanning all aspects of Roman GRS infrastructure work, as well as community connections that enable effective interactions in both cosmology and general astrophysics. Our team consists of 28 scientists (including 13 Collaborators) from a diverse range of institutions; 18 scientists are first-time participants in Roman work. Most team members are junior/mid-career scientists. The team includes 9 women and 6 persons of color, meeting NASA objectives for diversity and inclusion.