2017/11/06 by J. Bryce Kalmbach, Andrew J. Connolly · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Extrapolation #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Interpolation (computer graphics) #Outlier #Photometric redshift #Photometry (optics) #Redshift #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Spectral line #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aa9933
23 pages, 9 figures, accepted to AJ
arxiv created 2017/11/06 · openalex created_date 2017/11/17 · openalex publication_date 2017/12/01 · arxiv updated 2017/12/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract Measuring the physical properties of galaxies such as redshift frequently requires the use of spectral energy distributions (SEDs). SED template sets are, however, often small in number and cover limited portions of photometric color space. Here we present a new method to estimate SEDs as a function of color from a small training set of template SEDs. We first cover the mathematical background behind the technique before demonstrating our ability to reconstruct spectra based upon colors and then compare our results to other common interpolation and extrapolation methods. When the photometric filters and spectra overlap, we show that the error in the estimated spectra is reduced by more than 65% compared to the more commonly used techniques. We also show an expansion of the method to wavelengths beyond the range of the photometric filters. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of our technique by generating 50 additional SED templates from an original set of 10 and by applying the new set to photometric redshift estimation. We are able to reduce the photometric redshifts standard deviation by at least 22.0% and the outlier rejected bias by over 86.2% compared to original set for z ≤ 3.