LyαNNA II: Field-level inference with noisy Lyα forest spectra

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Autori principali: Nayak, Parth, Walther, Michael, Gruen, Daniel
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Nayak, Parth
Walther, Michael
Gruen, Daniel
author_facet Nayak, Parth
Walther, Michael
Gruen, Daniel
contents Deep learning (DL) has been shown to outperform traditional, human-defined summary statistics of the Lyα forest in constraining key astrophysical and cosmological parameters owing to its ability to tap into the realm of non-Gaussian information. An understanding of the impact of nuisance effects such as noise on such field-level frameworks, however, still remains elusive. In this work we conduct a systematic investigation into the efficacy of DL inference from noisy Lyα forest spectra. Building upon our previous, proof-of-concept framework (Nayak et al. 2024) for pure spectra, we constructed and trained a ResNet neural network using labeled mock data from hydrodynamical simulations with a range of noise levels to optimally compress noisy spectra into a novel summary statistic that is exclusively sensitive to the power-law temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium. We fit a Gaussian mixture surrogate with 23 components through our labels and summaries to estimate the joint data-parameter distribution for likelihood free inference, in addition to performing inference with a Gaussian likelihood. The posterior contours in the two cases agree well with each other. We compared the precision and accuracy of our posterior constraints with a combination of two human defined summaries (the 1D power spectrum and PDF of the Lyα transmission) that have been corrected for noise, over a wide range of continuum-to-noise ratios (CNR) in the likelihood case. We found a gain in precision in terms of posterior contour area with our pipeline over the said combination of 65% (at a CNR of 20 per 6 km/s) to 112% (at 200 per 6 km/s). While the improvement in posterior precision is not as large as in the noiseless case, these results indicate that DL still remains a powerful tool for inference even with noisy, real-world datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_19899
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LyαNNA II: Field-level inference with noisy Lyα forest spectra
Nayak, Parth
Walther, Michael
Gruen, Daniel
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Deep learning (DL) has been shown to outperform traditional, human-defined summary statistics of the Lyα forest in constraining key astrophysical and cosmological parameters owing to its ability to tap into the realm of non-Gaussian information. An understanding of the impact of nuisance effects such as noise on such field-level frameworks, however, still remains elusive. In this work we conduct a systematic investigation into the efficacy of DL inference from noisy Lyα forest spectra. Building upon our previous, proof-of-concept framework (Nayak et al. 2024) for pure spectra, we constructed and trained a ResNet neural network using labeled mock data from hydrodynamical simulations with a range of noise levels to optimally compress noisy spectra into a novel summary statistic that is exclusively sensitive to the power-law temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium. We fit a Gaussian mixture surrogate with 23 components through our labels and summaries to estimate the joint data-parameter distribution for likelihood free inference, in addition to performing inference with a Gaussian likelihood. The posterior contours in the two cases agree well with each other. We compared the precision and accuracy of our posterior constraints with a combination of two human defined summaries (the 1D power spectrum and PDF of the Lyα transmission) that have been corrected for noise, over a wide range of continuum-to-noise ratios (CNR) in the likelihood case. We found a gain in precision in terms of posterior contour area with our pipeline over the said combination of 65% (at a CNR of 20 per 6 km/s) to 112% (at 200 per 6 km/s). While the improvement in posterior precision is not as large as in the noiseless case, these results indicate that DL still remains a powerful tool for inference even with noisy, real-world datasets.
title LyαNNA II: Field-level inference with noisy Lyα forest spectra
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19899