Optimizing cosmic shear surveys to measure modifications to gravity on cosmic scales

We consider how upcoming photometric large-scale structure surveys can be optimized to measure the properties of dark energy (DE) and possible cosmic-scale modifications to General Relativity in light of realistic astrophysical and instrumental systematic uncertainties. In particular, we include flexible descriptions of intrinsic alignments (IAs), galaxy bias and photometric redshift uncertainties in a Fisher Matrix analysis of shear, position and position-shear correlations, including complementary cosmological constraints from the cosmic microwave background. We study the impact of survey trade-offs in depth versus breadth, and redshift quality. We parametrize the results in terms of the Dark Energy Task Force figure of merit, and deviations from General Relativity through an analogous modified gravity (MG) figure of merit. We find that IAs weaken the dependence of figure of merit on area and that, for a fixed observing time, halving the area of a Stage IV reduces the figure of merit by 20 per cent when IAs are not included and by only 10 per cent when IAs are included. While reducing photometric redshift scatter improves constraining power, the dependence is shallow. The variation in constraining power is stronger once IAs are included and is slightly more pronounced for MG constraints than for DE. The inclusion of IAs and galaxy position information reduces the required prior on photometric redshift accuracy by an order of magnitude for both the fiducial Stage III and IV surveys, equivalent to a factor of 100 reduction in the number of spectroscopic galaxies required to calibrate the photometric sample. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.