The Completeness of Accreting Neutron Star Binary Candidates from the Chinese Space Station Telescope

TL;DR

This study assesses the completeness of accreting neutron star binary candidates from CSST data using simulations and machine learning, highlighting factors affecting detection efficiency and the need for correction.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining binary evolution, population synthesis, and machine learning to evaluate the completeness of ANSB samples from CSST observations.

Findings

Machine learning achieves 94.56% precision but only 63.29% recall.

Completeness depends on companion mass and system age.

Low-mass companions yield higher detection recall.

Abstract

Neutron star (NS) has many extreme physical conditions, and one may obtain some important informations about NS via accreting neutron star binary (ANSB) systems. The upcoming Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) provides an opportunity to search for a large sample of ANSB candidates. Our goal is to check the completeness of the potential ANSB samples from CSST data. In this paper, we generate some ANSBs and normal binaries under CSST photometric system by binary evolution and binary population synthesis method and use a machine learning method to train a classification model. Although the Precision ($94.56~ \%$) of our machine learning model is as high as before study, the Recall is only about $63.29~ \%$. The Precision/Recall is mainly determined by the mass transfer rate between the NSs and their companions. In addition, we also find that the completeness of ANSB samples from CSST photometric data by the machine learning method also depends on the companion mass and the age of the system. ANSB candidates with low initial mass companion star ($0.1~ {\rm M}_\odot$ to $1~ {\rm M}_\odot$) have a relatively high Precision ($94.94~ \%$) and high Recall ($86.32~ \%$), whereas ANSB candidates with higher initial mass companion star ($1.1~ {\rm M}_\odot$ to $3~ {\rm M}_\odot$) have similar Precision ($93.88~ \%$) and quite low Recall ($42.67~ \%$). Our results indicate that although the machine learning method may obtain a relative pure sample of ANSBs, a completeness correction is necessary for one to obtain a complete sample.