Papers › The optical and infrared are connected
The optical and infrared are connected
Christian K. Jespersen, Peter Melchior, David N. Spergel, Andy D. Goulding, ChangHoon Hahn, Kartheik G. Iyer
Galaxies are often modelled as composites of separable components with distinct spectral signatures, implying that different wavelength ranges are only weakly correlated. They are not. We present a data-driven model which exploits subtle correlations between physical processes to accurately predict infrared (IR) WISE photometry from a neural summary of optical SDSS spectra. The model achieves accuracies of χ²_N ≈1 for all photometric bands in WISE, as well as good colors. We are also able to tightly constrain typically IR-derived properties, e.g. the bolometric luminosities of AGN and dust parameters such as q_(PAH). We find that current SED-fitting methods are incapable of making comparable predictions, and that model misspecification often leads to correlated biases in star-formation rates and AGN luminosities. To help improve SED models, we determine what features of the optical spectrum are responsible for our improved predictions, and identify several lines (CaII, SrII, FeI, [OII] and Hα), which point to the complex chronology of star formation and chemical enrichment being incorrectly modelled.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections