6,236 research outputs found
The Data Big Bang and the Expanding Digital Universe: High-Dimensional, Complex and Massive Data Sets in an Inflationary Epoch
Recent and forthcoming advances in instrumentation, and giant new surveys,
are creating astronomical data sets that are not amenable to the methods of
analysis familiar to astronomers. Traditional methods are often inadequate not
merely because of the size in bytes of the data sets, but also because of the
complexity of modern data sets. Mathematical limitations of familiar algorithms
and techniques in dealing with such data sets create a critical need for new
paradigms for the representation, analysis and scientific visualization (as
opposed to illustrative visualization) of heterogeneous, multiresolution data
across application domains. Some of the problems presented by the new data sets
have been addressed by other disciplines such as applied mathematics,
statistics and machine learning and have been utilized by other sciences such
as space-based geosciences. Unfortunately, valuable results pertaining to these
problems are mostly to be found only in publications outside of astronomy. Here
we offer brief overviews of a number of concepts, techniques and developments,
some "old" and some new. These are generally unknown to most of the
astronomical community, but are vital to the analysis and visualization of
complex datasets and images. In order for astronomers to take advantage of the
richness and complexity of the new era of data, and to be able to identify,
adopt, and apply new solutions, the astronomical community needs a certain
degree of awareness and understanding of the new concepts. One of the goals of
this paper is to help bridge the gap between applied mathematics, artificial
intelligence and computer science on the one side and astronomy on the other.Comment: 24 pages, 8 Figures, 1 Table. Accepted for publication: "Advances in
Astronomy, special issue "Robotic Astronomy
Problems in computational helioseismology
We discuss current advances in forward and inverse modeling for local
helioseismology. We report theoretical uniqueness results, in particular the
Novikov-Agaltsov reconstruction algorithm, which is relevant to solving the
non-linear inverse problem of time-distance helioseismology (finite amplitude
pertubations to the medium). Numerical experiments were conducted to determine
the number of frequencies required to reconstruct density and sound speed in
the solar interior.Comment: Oberwolfach Report, Computational Inverse Problems for Partial
Differential Equations, 14 May - 20 May 2017.
https://www.mfo.de/occasion/1720/www_vie
Phase Retrieval for Sparse Signals: Uniqueness Conditions
In a variety of fields, in particular those involving imaging and optics, we
often measure signals whose phase is missing or has been irremediably
distorted. Phase retrieval attempts the recovery of the phase information of a
signal from the magnitude of its Fourier transform to enable the reconstruction
of the original signal. A fundamental question then is: "Under which conditions
can we uniquely recover the signal of interest from its measured magnitudes?"
In this paper, we assume the measured signal to be sparse. This is a natural
assumption in many applications, such as X-ray crystallography, speckle imaging
and blind channel estimation. In this work, we derive a sufficient condition
for the uniqueness of the solution of the phase retrieval (PR) problem for both
discrete and continuous domains, and for one and multi-dimensional domains.
More precisely, we show that there is a strong connection between PR and the
turnpike problem, a classic combinatorial problem. We also prove that the
existence of collisions in the autocorrelation function of the signal may
preclude the uniqueness of the solution of PR. Then, assuming the absence of
collisions, we prove that the solution is almost surely unique on 1-dimensional
domains. Finally, we extend this result to multi-dimensional signals by solving
a set of 1-dimensional problems. We show that the solution of the
multi-dimensional problem is unique when the autocorrelation function has no
collisions, significantly improving upon a previously known result.Comment: submitted to IEEE TI
A Monte Carlo Template based analysis for Air-Cherenkov Arrays
We present a high-performance event reconstruction algorithm: an Image
Pixel-wise fit for Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (ImPACT). The
reconstruction algorithm is based around the likelihood fitting of camera pixel
amplitudes to an expected image template. A maximum likelihood fit is performed
to find the best-fit shower parameters. A related reconstruction algorithm has
already been shown to provide significant improvements over traditional
reconstruction for both the CAT and H.E.S.S. experiments. We demonstrate a
significant improvement to the template generation step of the procedure, by
the use of a full Monte Carlo air shower simulation in combination with a
ray-tracing optics simulation to more accurately model the expected camera
images. This reconstruction step is combined with an MVA-based background
rejection.
Examples are shown of the performance of the ImPACT analysis on both
simulated and measured (from a strong VHE source) gamma-ray data from the
H.E.S.S. array, demonstrating an improvement in sensitivity of more than a
factor two in observation time over traditional image moments-fitting methods,
with comparable performance to previous likelihood fitting analyses. ImPACT is
a particularly promising approach for future large arrays such as the Cherenkov
Telescope Array (CTA) due to its improved high-energy performance and
suitability for arrays of mixed telescope types.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
High-Dimensional Data Reduction, Image Inpainting and their Astronomical Applications
Technological advances are revolutionizing multispectral astrophysics as well as the detection and study of transient sources. This new era of multitemporal and multispectral data sets demands new ways of data representation, processing and management thus making data dimension reduction instrumental in efficient data organization, retrieval, analysis and information visualization. Other astrophysical applications of data dimension reduction which require new paradigms of data analysis include knowledge discovery, cluster analysis, feature extraction and object classification, de-correlating data elements, discovering meaningful patterns and finding essential representation of correlated variables that form a manifold (e.g. the manifold of galaxies), tagging astronomical images, multiscale analysis synchronized across all available wavelengths, denoising, etc. The second part of this paper is dedicated to a new, active area of image processing: image inpainting that consists of automated methods for filling in missing or damaged regions in images. Inpainting has multiple astronomical applications including restoring images corrupted by instrument artifacts, removing undesirable objects like bright stars and their halos, sky estimating, and pre-processing for the Fourier or wavelet transforms. Applications of high-dimensional data reduction and mitigation of instrument artifacts are demonstrated on images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope
Phaseless VLBI mapping of compact extragalactic radio sources
The problem of phaseless aperture synthesis is of current interest in
phase-unstable VLBI with a small number of elements when either the use of
closure phases is not possible (a two-element interferometer) or their quality
and number are not enough for acceptable image reconstruction by standard
adaptive calibration methods. Therefore, we discuss the problem of unique image
reconstruction only from the spectrum magnitude of a source. We suggest an
efficient method for phaseless VLBI mapping of compact extragalactic radio
sources. This method is based on the reconstruction of the spectrum magnitude
for a source on the entire UV plane from the measured visibility magnitude on a
limited set of points and the reconstruction of the sought-for image of the
source by Fienup's method from the spectrum magnitude reconstructed at the
first stage. We present the results of our mapping of the extragalactic radio
source 2200 +420 using astrometric and geodetic observations on a global VLBI
array. Particular attention is given to studying the capabilities of a
two-element interferometer in connection with the putting into operation of a
Russian-made radio interferometer based on Quasar RT-32 radio telescopes.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
On Relaxed Averaged Alternating Reflections (RAAR) Algorithm for Phase Retrieval from Structured Illuminations
In this paper, as opposed to the random phase masks, the structured
illuminations with a pixel-dependent deterministic phase shift are considered
to derandomize the model setup. The RAAR algorithm is modified to adapt to two
or more diffraction patterns, and the modified RAAR algorithm operates in
Fourier domain rather than space domain. The local convergence of the RAAR
algorithm is proved by some eigenvalue analysis. Numerical simulations is
presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and stability of the algorithm
compared to the HIO (Hybrid Input-Output) method. The numerical performances
show the global convergence of the RAAR in our tests.Comment: 17 pages, 26 figures, submitting to Inverse Problem
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: CO(J = 3 - 2) mapping and lens modeling of an ACT-selected dusty star-forming galaxy
We report Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) CO()
observations of the dusty star-forming galaxy ACT-S\,J020941+001557 at , which was detected as an unresolved source in the Atacama Cosmology
Telescope (ACT) equatorial survey. Our spatially resolved spectral line data
support the derivation of a gravitational lens model from 37 independent
velocity channel maps using a pixel-based algorithm, from which we infer a
velocity-dependent magnification factor with a
luminosity-weighted mean \left\approx 13. The resulting
source-plane reconstruction is consistent with a rotating disk, although other
scenarios cannot be ruled out by our data. After correction for lensing, we
derive a line luminosity , a cold gas mass , a dynamical mass , and a gas mass
fraction . The line brightness
temperature ratio of relative to a Green Bank Telescope
CO() detection may be elevated by a combination of external heating of
molecular clouds, differential lensing, and/or pointing errors.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted to Ap
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