Surrogate-Accelerated Bayesian Inversion for Exoplanet Interior Characterization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: De Wringer, Tijn, Dorn, Caroline, Garvin, Emily O., Marelli, Stefano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author De Wringer, Tijn
Dorn, Caroline
Garvin, Emily O.
Marelli, Stefano
author_facet De Wringer, Tijn
Dorn, Caroline
Garvin, Emily O.
Marelli, Stefano
contents Characterizing the interior structure of exoplanets is an inverse problem often solved using Bayesian inference, but this approach is hampered by the high computational cost of planetary structure models. To overcome this barrier, we present a robust framework that accelerates inference by replacing the computationally expensive physics-based forward model with a fast polynomial chaos-Kriging (PCK) surrogate directly within a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling loop. We rigorously validate our approach using a suite of tests, including a direct comparison against a benchmark MCMC inference using the full forward model, and a large-scale coverage study with 1000 synthetic test cases to demonstrate the statistical reliability of our inferred credible intervals. Our surrogate-assisted framework achieves a computational speedup of over 2 orders of magnitude (factor of $\sim$320), reducing single-CPU inference times from days to minutes. This efficiency is achieved with a surrogate that requires only a few hundred forward model evaluations for training \rev{for a single planet}. This data efficiency provides significant flexibility for model developments and a clear advantage over common machine learning approaches, which typically demand vast training sets ($>10^6$ model runs) and intensive pre-computation. The PCK surrogate maintains high fidelity with $R^2 > 0.99$ for most scenarios, and root-mean-square errors typically an order of magnitude smaller than observational uncertainties. This efficiency enables large scale population studies while preserving statistical robustness, which is computationally impractical with traditional methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_17626
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Surrogate-Accelerated Bayesian Inversion for Exoplanet Interior Characterization
De Wringer, Tijn
Dorn, Caroline
Garvin, Emily O.
Marelli, Stefano
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Characterizing the interior structure of exoplanets is an inverse problem often solved using Bayesian inference, but this approach is hampered by the high computational cost of planetary structure models. To overcome this barrier, we present a robust framework that accelerates inference by replacing the computationally expensive physics-based forward model with a fast polynomial chaos-Kriging (PCK) surrogate directly within a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling loop. We rigorously validate our approach using a suite of tests, including a direct comparison against a benchmark MCMC inference using the full forward model, and a large-scale coverage study with 1000 synthetic test cases to demonstrate the statistical reliability of our inferred credible intervals. Our surrogate-assisted framework achieves a computational speedup of over 2 orders of magnitude (factor of $\sim$320), reducing single-CPU inference times from days to minutes. This efficiency is achieved with a surrogate that requires only a few hundred forward model evaluations for training \rev{for a single planet}. This data efficiency provides significant flexibility for model developments and a clear advantage over common machine learning approaches, which typically demand vast training sets ($>10^6$ model runs) and intensive pre-computation. The PCK surrogate maintains high fidelity with $R^2 > 0.99$ for most scenarios, and root-mean-square errors typically an order of magnitude smaller than observational uncertainties. This efficiency enables large scale population studies while preserving statistical robustness, which is computationally impractical with traditional methods.
title Surrogate-Accelerated Bayesian Inversion for Exoplanet Interior Characterization
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17626