Learning Spectral Templates for Photometric Redshift Estimation from Broadband Photometry

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Hauptverfasser: Crenshaw, John Franklin, Connolly, Andrew J.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2020
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author Crenshaw, John Franklin
Connolly, Andrew J.
author_facet Crenshaw, John Franklin
Connolly, Andrew J.
contents Estimating redshifts from broadband photometry is often limited by how accurately we can map the colors of galaxies to an underlying spectral template. Current techniques utilize spectrophotometric samples of galaxies or spectra derived from spectral synthesis models. Both of these approaches have their limitations, either the sample sizes are small and often not representative of the diversity of galaxy colors or the model colors can be biased (often as a function of wavelength) which introduces systematics in the derived redshifts. In this paper we learn the underlying spectral energy distributions from an ensemble of $\sim$100K galaxies with measured redshifts and colors. We show that we are able to reconstruct emission and absorption lines at a significantly higher resolution than the broadband filters used to measure the photometry for a sample of 20 spectral templates. We find that our training algorithm reduces the fraction of outliers in the derived photometric redshifts by up to 28%, bias up to 91%, and scatter up to 25%, when compared to estimates using a standard set of spectral templates. We discuss the current limitations of this approach and its applicability for recovering the underlying properties of galaxies. Our derived templates and the code used to produce these results are publicly available in a dedicated Github repository: https://github.com/dirac-institute/photoz_template_learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2008_04291
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Spectral Templates for Photometric Redshift Estimation from Broadband Photometry
Crenshaw, John Franklin
Connolly, Andrew J.
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Estimating redshifts from broadband photometry is often limited by how accurately we can map the colors of galaxies to an underlying spectral template. Current techniques utilize spectrophotometric samples of galaxies or spectra derived from spectral synthesis models. Both of these approaches have their limitations, either the sample sizes are small and often not representative of the diversity of galaxy colors or the model colors can be biased (often as a function of wavelength) which introduces systematics in the derived redshifts. In this paper we learn the underlying spectral energy distributions from an ensemble of $\sim$100K galaxies with measured redshifts and colors. We show that we are able to reconstruct emission and absorption lines at a significantly higher resolution than the broadband filters used to measure the photometry for a sample of 20 spectral templates. We find that our training algorithm reduces the fraction of outliers in the derived photometric redshifts by up to 28%, bias up to 91%, and scatter up to 25%, when compared to estimates using a standard set of spectral templates. We discuss the current limitations of this approach and its applicability for recovering the underlying properties of galaxies. Our derived templates and the code used to produce these results are publicly available in a dedicated Github repository: https://github.com/dirac-institute/photoz_template_learning.
title Learning Spectral Templates for Photometric Redshift Estimation from Broadband Photometry
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04291