Parameterizing Stellar Spectra Using Deep Neural Networks

Abstract

Large-scale sky surveys are observing massive amounts of stellar spectra. The large number of stellar spectra makes it necessary to automatically parameterize spectral data, which in turn helps in statistically exploring properties related to the atmospheric parameters. This work focuses on designing an automatic scheme to estimate effective temperature (Teff), surface gravity (log g) and metallicity [Fe/H] from stellar spectra. A scheme based on three deep neural networks (DNNs) is proposed. This scheme consists of the following three procedures: first, the configuration of a DNN is initialized using a series of autoencoder neural networks; second, the DNN is fine-tuned using a gradient descent scheme; third, three atmospheric parameters Teff, log g and [Fe/H] are estimated using the computed DNNs. The constructed DNN is a neural network with six layers (one input layer, one output layer and four hidden layers), for which the number of nodes in the six layers are 3821, 1000, 500, 100, 30 and 1, respectively. This proposed scheme was tested on both real spectra and theoretical spectra from Kurucz's new opacity distribution function models. Test errors are measured with mean absolute errors (MAEs). The errors on real spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are 0.1477, 0.0048 and 0.1129 dex for log g, log Teff and [Fe/H] (64.85K for Teff), respectively. Regarding theoretical spectra from Kurucz's new opacity distribution function models, the MAE of the test errors are 0.0182, 0.0011 and 0.0112 dex for log g, log Teff and [Fe/H] (14.90 K for Teff), respectively.