Inferring Asteroseismic Parameters from Short Observations Using Deep Learning: Application to TESS and K2 Red Giants

Generative AI & LLMs
Published: arXiv: 2605.08051v1
Authors

Nipun Ghanghas Siddharth Dhanpal Shravan Hanasoge Praneeth Netrapalli Karthikeyan Shanmugam

Abstract

Asteroseismology is the study of resonant oscillations of stars to infer their internal structure and dynamics. It is also a powerful tool for precisely determining stellar parameters such as mass, radius, surface gravity, and age. The ongoing TESS mission, with its nearly complete sky coverage, presents a unique opportunity to uniformly probe stellar populations across the Milky Way. TESS is estimated to have observed more than 300,000 oscillating red giants, most of which have one to two months of observations. Given the scale of this dataset, we need a fast, efficient, and robust way to analyse the data. In this work, our objective is to develop a machine learning (ML) based method to infer asteroseismic parameters from short-duration observations. Specifically, we focus on two global seismic parameters, the large frequency separation ($Δν$) and the frequency at maximum power ($ν_{\mathrm{max}}$), from one-month-long TESS observations of red giants. Meanwhile, for K2 data, our focus extends to inferring the period spacings of dipolar gravity modes ($ΔΠ_{1}$), in addition to $Δν$ and $ν_{\mathrm{max}}$. Our findings demonstrate that our machine learning algorithm can accurately infer $Δν$ and $ν_{\mathrm{max}}$ for approximately 50% of samples created by taking one-month Kepler and K2 observations. For TESS one sector data however, we recover reliable $Δν$ for only about 23% of the stars. Additionally, we get reliable $ΔΠ_{1}$ inferences for about 200 young red-giants from K2. For these $ΔΠ_{1}$ inferences, we see a good match with the well known $Δν-ΔΠ_{1}$ degenerate sequence observed in Kepler red-giants.

Paper Summary

Problem
Asteroseismology, the study of star oscillations, is a powerful tool for determining a star's internal structure and dynamics. With the upcoming TESS mission, which will observe over 300,000 oscillating red giants, a fast and efficient way to analyze the data is needed. However, traditional methods require a lot of time and computational power, making it challenging to process the vast amount of data generated by TESS.
Key Innovation
This research paper presents a machine learning-based method to infer asteroseismic parameters from short-duration observations. The authors developed a deep learning model that takes normalized power spectral densities (PSDs) as input and outputs probability distributions for key parameters such as the frequency at maximum power (νmax), the large frequency separation (∆ν), and the period spacings of dipolar gravity modes (∆Π1). This model can learn relevant features directly from the data without requiring background fitting or mode identification.
Practical Impact
This research has the potential to revolutionize the field of asteroseismology by providing a fast and efficient way to analyze the vast amount of data generated by space-based missions like TESS. By inferring key asteroseismic parameters from short-duration observations, researchers can gain insights into the internal structure and dynamics of stars, which can be used to study the properties of stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole. This research can also enable ensemble-scale galactic archaeology, which can help us understand the history and evolution of our galaxy.
Analogy / Intuitive Explanation
Imagine you are trying to identify a melody in a noisy background. Traditional methods would require you to listen to the entire song to identify the melody, whereas machine learning algorithms can learn the patterns and features of the melody from a short snippet of the song. Similarly, this research uses machine learning to identify the patterns and features of star oscillations from short-duration observations, allowing for faster and more efficient analysis of the data.
Paper Information
Categories:
astro-ph.SR stat.ML
Published Date:

arXiv ID:

2605.08051v1

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