Mapping the Milky Way with Gaia Bp/Rp spectra I: Systematic flux corrections and atmospheric parameters for 68 million stars

TL;DR

This paper improves Gaia Bp/Rp spectra calibration and derives atmospheric parameters for over 68 million stars, enhancing the accuracy of stellar mapping and metal-poor star detection in the Milky Way.

Contribution

It introduces a new method combining flux corrections and neural networks to accurately estimate stellar atmospheric parameters from Gaia spectra.

Findings

Corrected spectra show improved agreement with models and HST data.

Increased spectrophotometry precision from ~3.5% to ~2%.

Catalog of atmospheric parameters for 68 million stars created.

Abstract

Gaia Bp/Rp spectra for over two hundred million stars have great potential for mapping metallicity across the Milky Way. We aim to construct an alternative catalog of atmospheric parameters from Gaia Bp/Rp spectra by fitting them with synthetic spectra based on model atmospheres, and provide corrections to the Bp/Rp fluxes according to stellar colors, magnitudes, and extinction. We use GaiaXPy to obtain calibrated spectra and apply FERRE to match the corrected Bp/Rp spectra with models and infer atmospheric parameters. We train a neural network using stars in APOGEE to predict flux corrections as a function of wavelength for each target. Based on the comparison with APOGEE parameters, we conclude that our estimated parameters have systematic errors and uncertainties in $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$, $\log g$, and [M/H] about $-38 \pm 167$ K, $0.05 \pm 0.40$ dex, and $-0.12 \pm 0.19$ dex, respectively, for stars in the range $4000 \le T_{\mathrm{eff}} \le 7000$ K. The corrected Bp/Rp spectra show better agreement with both models and Hubble Space Telescope CALSPEC data. Our correction increases the precision of the relative spectrophotometry of the Bp/Rp data from $3.2\% - 3.7\%$ to $1.2\% - 2.4\%$. Finally, we have built a catalog of atmospheric parameters for stars within $4000 \le T_{\mathrm{eff}} \le 7000$ K, comprising $68,394,431$ sources, along with a subset of $124,188$ stars with $\mathrm{[M/H]} \le -2.5$. Our results confirm that the Gaia Bp/Rp flux calibrated spectra show systematic patterns as a function of wavelength that are tightly related to colors, magnitudes, and extinction. Our optimization algorithm can give us accurate atmospheric parameters of stars with a clear and direct link to models of stellar atmospheres, and can be used to efficiently search for extremely metal-poor stars.