1,498 research outputs found
Analysis of a Custom Support Vector Machine for Photometric Redshift Estimation and the Inclusion of Galaxy Shape Information
Aims: We present a custom support vector machine classification package for
photometric redshift estimation, including comparisons with other methods. We
also explore the efficacy of including galaxy shape information in redshift
estimation. Support vector machines, a type of machine learning, utilize
optimization theory and supervised learning algorithms to construct predictive
models based on the information content of data in a way that can treat
different input features symmetrically.
Methods: The custom support vector machine package we have developed is
designated SPIDERz and made available to the community. As test data for
evaluating performance and comparison with other methods, we apply SPIDERz to
four distinct data sets: 1) the publicly available portion of the PHAT-1
catalog based on the GOODS-N field with spectroscopic redshifts in the range , 2) 14365 galaxies from the COSMOS bright survey with photometric band
magnitudes, morphology, and spectroscopic redshifts inside , 3) 3048
galaxies from the overlap of COSMOS photometry and morphology with 3D-HST
spectroscopy extending to , and 4) 2612 galaxies with five-band
photometric magnitudes and morphology from the All-wavelength Extended Groth
Strip International Survey and .
Results: We find that SPIDER-z achieves results competitive with other
empirical packages on the PHAT-1 data, and performs quite well in estimating
redshifts with the COSMOS and AEGIS data, including in the cases of a large
redshift range (). We also determine from analyses with both the
COSMOS and AEGIS data that the inclusion of morphological information does not
have a statistically significant benefit for photometric redshift estimation
with the techniques employed here.Comment: Submitted to A&A, 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, updated to version
in revisio
Geant4 Applications for Modeling Molecular Transport in Complex Vacuum Geometries
We discuss a novel use of the Geant4 simulation toolkit to model molecular
transport in a vacuum environment, in the molecular flow regime. The Geant4
toolkit was originally developed by the high energy physics community to
simulate the interactions of elementary particles within complex detector
systems. Here its capabilities are utilized to model molecular vacuum transport
in geometries where other techniques are impractical. The techniques are
verified with an application representing a simple vacuum geometry that has
been studied previously both analytically and by basic Monte Carlo simulation.
We discuss the use of an application with a very complicated geometry, that of
the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera cryostat, to determine probabilities
of transport of contaminant molecules to optical surfaces where control of
contamination is crucial.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, to appear in IJMSSC, updated to
accepted versio
Flux and Photon Spectral Index Distributions of Fermi-LAT Blazars And Contribution To The Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background
We present a determination of the distributions of photon spectral index and
gamma-ray flux - the so called LogN-LogS relation - for the 352 blazars
detected with a greater than approximately seven sigma detection threshold and
located above +/- 20 degrees Galactic latitude by the Large Area Telescope of
the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in its first year catalog. Because the flux
detection threshold depends on the photon index, the observed raw distributions
do not provide the true LogN-LogS counts or the true distribution of the photon
index. We use the non-parametric methods developed by Efron and Petrosian to
reconstruct the intrinsic distributions from the observed ones which account
for the data truncations introduced by observational bias and includes the
effects of the possible correlation between the two variables. We demonstrate
the robustness of our procedures using a simulated data set of blazars and then
apply these to the real data and find that for the population as a whole the
intrinsic flux distribution can be represented by a broken power law with high
and low indexes of -2.37 +/- 0.13 and -1.70 +/- 0.26, respectively, and the
intrinsic photon index distribution can be represented by a Gaussian with mean
of 2.41 +/- 0.13 and width of 0.25 +/- 0.03. We also find the intrinsic
distributions for the sub-populations of BL Lac and FSRQs type blazars
separately. We then calculate the contribution of Fermi blazars to the diffuse
extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation. Under the assumption that the
flux distribution of blazars continues to arbitrarily low fluxes, we calculate
the best fit contribution of all blazars to the total extragalactic gamma-ray
output to be 60%, with a large uncertainty.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, updated to published version with
additional figure
Gamma-ray Luminosity and Photon Index Evolution of FSRQ Blazars and Contribution to the Gamma-ray Background
We present the redshift evolutions and distributions of the gamma-ray
luminosity and photon spectral index of flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) type
blazars, using non-parametric methods to obtain the evolutions and
distributions directly from the data. The sample we use for analysis consists
of almost all FSRQs observed with a greater than approximately 7 sigma
detection threshold in the first year catalog of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space
Telescope's Large Area Telescope, with redshfits as determined from optical
spectroscopy by Shaw et al. We find that FSQRs undergo rapid gamma-ray
luminosity evolution, but negligible photon index evolution, with redshift.
With these evolutions accounted for we determine the density evolution and
luminosity function of FSRQs, and calculate their total contribution to the
extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation, resolved and unresolved, which is
found to be 16(+10/-4)%, in agreement with previous studies.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to Ap
Axial Ratio of Edge-On Spiral Galaxies as a Test For Extended Bright Radio Halos
We use surface brightness contour maps of nearby edge-on spiral galaxies to
determine whether extended bright radio halos are common. In particular, we
test a recent model of the spatial structure of the diffuse radio continuum by
Subrahmanyan and Cowsik which posits that a substantial fraction of the
observed high-latitude surface brightness originates from an extended Galactic
halo of uniform emissivity. Measurements of the axial ratio of emission
contours within a sample of normal spiral galaxies at 1500 MHz and below show
no evidence for such a bright, extended radio halo. Either the Galaxy is
atypical compared to nearby quiescent spirals or the bulk of the observed
high-latitude emission does not originate from this type of extended halo.Comment: 6 Pages, 4 Figures, 1 Table; To Appear In ApJ Letter
ARCADE 2 Measurement of the Extra-Galactic Sky Temperature at 3-90 GHz
The ARCADE 2 instrument has measured the absolute temperature of the sky at
frequencies 3, 8, 10, 30, and 90 GHz, using an open-aperture cryogenic
instrument observing at balloon altitudes with no emissive windows between the
beam-forming optics and the sky. An external blackbody calibrator provides an
{\it in situ} reference. Systematic errors were greatly reduced by using
differential radiometers and cooling all critical components to physical
temperatures approximating the CMB temperature. A linear model is used to
compare the output of each radiometer to a set of thermometers on the
instrument. Small corrections are made for the residual emission from the
flight train, balloon, atmosphere, and foreground Galactic emission. The ARCADE
2 data alone show an extragalactic rise of mK at 3.3 GHz in addition
to a CMB temperature of K. Combining the ARCADE 2 data with
data from the literature shows a background power law spectrum of [K] from 22 MHz to 10 GHz ( GHz)
in addition to a CMB temperature of K.Comment: 11 pages 5 figures Submitted to Ap
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