Forecasting the Constraint on the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ Modified Gravity in the CSST $3\times2$pt Photometric Survey

TL;DR

This paper forecasts how well the CSST photometric survey can constrain the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ modified gravity model using simulated galaxy clustering, weak lensing, and galaxy-galaxy lensing data, showing promising potential for testing gravity theories.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive forecast method combining two modeling approaches to constrain $f(R)$ gravity with CSST data, including nonlinear effects and systematic parameters.

Findings

Upper bounds on $|f_{R0}|$ are around $10^{-5.4}$ from the 100 deg$^2$ survey.

Full 17,500 deg$^2$ survey could improve constraints by an order of magnitude.

The two modeling methods agree well at large scales, validating the approach.

Abstract

We forecast the constraint on the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ model from the photometric survey operated by the Chinese Space Station Survey Telescope (CSST). The simulated $3\times2$pt data of galaxy clustering, weak lensing, and galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements within 100 deg$^{2}$ are used in the analysis. The mock observational maps are constructed from a light cone, redshift sampling and noise. The angular power spectra are measured with pseudo-$C_\ell$ estimators and compared to theory in the same basis using validated weighting functions and an analytic covariance matrix that includes Gaussian, connected non-Gaussian, and super-sample terms. We model the theoretical spectra using two methods. The first one uses MGCAMB to compute the linear modified-gravity clustering power spectra, and the second one adopts the FREmu emulator with a baseline of nonlinear $\Lambda$CDM prescription. Parameter inference is performed with Cobaya, and the cosmological and modified-gravity parameters are sampled within the emulator training domain, which is jointly fitted with the systematic parameters. We find that the predictions from the two methods are in good agreement at the overlapping large scales, and the emulator method can correctly provide additional high-$\ell$ information. The $1\sigma$ upper bounds of $\log_{10}|f_{R0}|$ are found to be $<-5.42$ for cosmic shear only case and $<-5.29$ for the 100 deg$^2$ CSST $3\times2$pt probe. The full CSST photometric survey with 17,500 deg$^2$ survey area is expected to further improve the constraint precision by about one order of magnitude. Our results demonstrate that the CSST $3\times2$pt survey can deliver strict tests on $f(R)$ gravity.