The High Latitude Spectroscopic Survey on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Abstract

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a High Latitude Spectroscopic Survey (HLSS) over a large volume at high redshift, using the near-IR grism (1.0–1.93 μm, R = 435–865) and the 0.28 deg² wide-field camera. We present a reference HLSS that maps 2000 deg² and achieves an emission-line flux limit of 10⁻¹⁶ erg s⁻¹ cm⁻² at 6.5σ, requiring ∼0.6 yr of observing time. We summarize the flowdown of the Roman science objectives to the science and technical requirements of the HLSS. We construct a mock redshift survey over the full HLSS volume by applying a semianalytic galaxy formation model to a cosmological N-body simulation and use this mock survey to create pixel-level simulations of 4 deg² of HLSS grism spectroscopy. We find that the reference HLSS would measure ∼10 million Hα galaxy redshifts that densely map large-scale structure at z = 1–2 and 2 million [O III] galaxy redshifts that sparsely map structures at z = 2–3. We forecast the performance of this survey for measurements of the cosmic expansion history with baryon acoustic oscillations and the growth of large-scale structure with redshift-space distortions. We also study possible deviations from the reference design and find that a deep HLSS at f_(line) > 7 × 10⁻¹⁷ erg s⁻¹ cm⁻² over 4000 deg² (requiring ∼1.5 yr of observing time) provides the most compelling stand-alone constraints on dark energy from Roman alone. This provides a useful reference for future optimizations. The reference survey, simulated data sets, and forecasts presented here will inform community decisions on the final scope and design of the Roman HLSS.