Physical cosmology studies our Universe, its origin, evolution and the laws governing it.
In the last decades a concordance cosmological model and the concept of precision cosmology emerged.
The concordance model successfully explains the most accurate cosmological measurements available to date..
Precision cosmology now seeks after shrinking all possible measurement error.
The forward model approach is the concept of modeling the complete measurement process down to its tiniest details using a state-of-the-art theoretical framework.
To enhance the precision of our understanding of the Universe, we thus need to apply forward models on the largest possible data sets.
In the coming decade, extragalactic surveys are about to overcome statistical errors with data sets a hundred times larger than today’s.
Forward modeling is the key to more robust and more accurate cosmological statements based on extragalactic surveys.
In this presentation I will first detail the upcoming challenge to forward model upcoming massive spectroscopic surveys e.g. 4MOST, DESI, MSE …
Then I illustrate this challenge based on recent results of the SDSS-IV eBOSS survey, a pathfinder for these next generation surveys.