Probabilistic neural network approach to determining parameters of eclipsing binaries

TL;DR

This paper introduces a probabilistic neural network that efficiently predicts stellar and orbital parameters of eclipsing binaries from various observational data, enabling rapid analysis in large surveys.

Contribution

It presents a novel uncertainty-aware neural network trained on synthetic data to determine binary star parameters quickly and robustly, even with incomplete or complex data.

Findings

Achieves <20% precision in mass and radius estimates

Determines effective temperature with ~500 K accuracy

Operates significantly faster than traditional methods

Abstract

Eclipsing binaries provide one of the most direct mechanisms for measuring stellar properties such as mass and radius, but historically, determining these properties has been non-trivial and computationally prohibitive. As such, only a small fraction of all eclipsing binaries for which data have been available have been fully characterized. To improve computational efficiency, we construct an uncertainty-aware neural network which can ingest phase-folded light curves in any of 50 commonly used passbands, combined with phase-folded radial velocity measurements for both primary and secondary, as well as fluxes across the spectral energy distribution to predict stellar and orbital parameters of eclipsing binaries. The model was trained to be agnostic to the presence of third light, spots (both cool and hot), and incomplete data. As the model is operating in a probabilistic framework, it is also capable of outputting uncertainties in all of the parameters. The model was trained on synthetic data, and applied to a set of $\sim$200 previously solved real eclipsing binaries to demonstrate its performance. The model is capable of determining masses and radii of eclipsing binaries with precision of $\lesssim$20\% and $T_{\rm eff}$ with precision of $\sim$500 K in only a fraction of the time it takes the more traditional solvers. Although the resulting uncertainties are larger than what is possible to produce using more boutique analysis of individual stars, in the era of large photometric surveys, this approach allows to identify the most interesting systems, and it provides a starting point of the distributions in all of the parameters that these solvers could improve upon.