Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yong, Suk Yee, Harborne, K. E., Foster, Caroline, Bassett, Robert, Poole, Gregory B., Cavanagh, Mitchell
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04491
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929343184240640
author Yong, Suk Yee
Harborne, K. E.
Foster, Caroline
Bassett, Robert
Poole, Gregory B.
Cavanagh, Mitchell
author_facet Yong, Suk Yee
Harborne, K. E.
Foster, Caroline
Bassett, Robert
Poole, Gregory B.
Cavanagh, Mitchell
contents Since the turn of the century, astronomers have been exploiting the rich information afforded by combining stellar kinematic maps and imaging in an attempt to recover the intrinsic, three-dimensional (3D) shape of a galaxy. A common intrinsic shape recovery method relies on an expected monotonic relationship between the intrinsic misalignment of the kinematic and morphological axes and the triaxiality parameter. Recent studies have, however, cast doubt about underlying assumptions relating shape and intrinsic kinematic misalignment. In this work, we aim to recover the 3D shape of individual galaxies using their projected stellar kinematic and flux distributions using a supervised machine learning approach with mixture density network (MDN). Using a mock dataset of the EAGLE hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, we train the MDN model for a carefully selected set of common kinematic and photometric parameters. Compared to previous methods, we demonstrate potential improvements achieved with the MDN model to retrieve the 3D galaxy shape along with the uncertainties, especially for prolate and triaxial systems. We make specific recommendations for recovering galaxy intrinsic shapes relevant for current and future integral field spectroscopic galaxy surveys.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_04491
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Galaxy 3D Shape Recovery using Mixture Density Network
Yong, Suk Yee
Harborne, K. E.
Foster, Caroline
Bassett, Robert
Poole, Gregory B.
Cavanagh, Mitchell
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Machine Learning
Since the turn of the century, astronomers have been exploiting the rich information afforded by combining stellar kinematic maps and imaging in an attempt to recover the intrinsic, three-dimensional (3D) shape of a galaxy. A common intrinsic shape recovery method relies on an expected monotonic relationship between the intrinsic misalignment of the kinematic and morphological axes and the triaxiality parameter. Recent studies have, however, cast doubt about underlying assumptions relating shape and intrinsic kinematic misalignment. In this work, we aim to recover the 3D shape of individual galaxies using their projected stellar kinematic and flux distributions using a supervised machine learning approach with mixture density network (MDN). Using a mock dataset of the EAGLE hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, we train the MDN model for a carefully selected set of common kinematic and photometric parameters. Compared to previous methods, we demonstrate potential improvements achieved with the MDN model to retrieve the 3D galaxy shape along with the uncertainties, especially for prolate and triaxial systems. We make specific recommendations for recovering galaxy intrinsic shapes relevant for current and future integral field spectroscopic galaxy surveys.
title Galaxy 3D Shape Recovery using Mixture Density Network
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04491