Machine Learning Approach to Estimation of Stellar Atmospheric Parameters

We present a machine learning approach to estimating stellar atmospheric parameters, effective temperature (Teff), surface gravity (log g), and metallicity ([Fe/H]) for stars observed during the course of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). For training a neural network, we randomly sampled the SDSS data with stellar parameters available from SEGUE Stellar Parameter Pipeline (SSPP) to cover the parameter space as wide as possible. We selected stars that are not included in the training sample as validation sample to determine the accuracy and precision of each parameter. We also divided the training and validation samples into four groups that cover signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 10-20, 20-30, 30-50, and over 50 to assess the effect of S/N on the parameter estimation. We find from the comparison of the network-driven parameters with the SSPP ones the range of the uncertainties of 73~123 K in Teff, 0.18~0.42 dex in log g, and 0.12~0.25 dex in [Fe/H], respectively, depending on the S/N range adopted. We conclude that these precisions are high enough to study the chemical and kinematic properties of the Galactic disk and halo stars, and we will attempt to apply this technique to Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), which plans to obtain about 8 million stellar spectra, in order to estimate stellar parameters.