Linearly Supporting Feature Extraction For Automated Estimation Of Stellar Atmospheric Parameters

TL;DR

This paper introduces a linear feature extraction scheme for stellar spectra that accurately estimates atmospheric parameters using wavelet decomposition, feature selection, and linear regression, validated on SDSS and synthetic data.

Contribution

The novel scheme combines wavelet packet decomposition, LARS-based feature selection, and linear regression to efficiently and interpretably estimate stellar atmospheric parameters.

Findings

Achieved low MAEs for real spectra: 83 K for T_eff, 0.2345 dex for log g, 0.1564 dex for [Fe/H]

Achieved even lower MAEs for synthetic spectra: 32 K for T_eff, 0.0337 dex for log g, 0.0268 dex for [Fe/H]

Enabled quantitative contribution analysis of spectral features to parameter estimation.

Abstract

We describe a scheme to extract linearly supporting (LSU) features from stellar spectra to automatically estimate the atmospheric parameters $T_{eff}$, log$~g$, and [Fe/H]. "Linearly supporting" means that the atmospheric parameters can be accurately estimated from the extracted features through a linear model. The successive steps of the process are as follow: first, decompose the spectrum using a wavelet packet (WP) and represent it by the derived decomposition coefficients; second, detect representative spectral features from the decomposition coefficients using the proposed method Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LARS)$_{bs}$; third, estimate the atmospheric parameters $T_{eff}$, log$~g$, and [Fe/H] from the detected features using a linear regression method. One prominent characteristic of this scheme is its ability to evaluate quantitatively the contribution of each detected feature to the atmospheric parameter estimate and also to trace back the physical significance of that feature. This work also shows that the usefulness of a component depends on both wavelength and frequency. The proposed scheme has been evaluated on both real spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)/SEGUE and synthetic spectra calculated from Kurucz's NEWODF models. On real spectra, we extracted 23 features to estimate $T_{eff}$, 62 features for log$~g$, and 68 features for [Fe/H]. Test consistencies between our estimates and those provided by the Spectroscopic Sarameter Pipeline of SDSS show that the mean absolute errors (MAEs) are 0.0062 dex for log$~T_{eff}$ (83 K for $T_{eff}$), 0.2345 dex for log$~g$, and 0.1564 dex for [Fe/H]. For the synthetic spectra, the MAE test accuracies are 0.0022 dex for log$~T_{eff}$ (32 K for $T_{eff}$), 0.0337 dex for log$~g$, and 0.0268 dex for [Fe/H].