arXiv subjects

Jiangchuan Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Jiangchuan Zhang.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Generalist Model Including Evolved Star Mass and Age

Determining precise stellar ages and masses for evolved giants is crucial for Galactic archaeology but challenged by spectral degeneracies. Gaia's low-resolution XP spectra offer a unique opportunity to infer these parameters on a massive scale using data-driven methods. We extend a transformer-based astronomical foundation model to evolved stars, establishing a unified framework to simultaneously predict atmospheric parameters ($T_{\mathrm{eff}}$, $\log g$, $[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]$) and evolutionary labels (mass, age) with physical consistency. Treating spectra as token sequences, we integrated mass and age into the model's vocabulary. The model is trained on Gaia XP spectra cross-matched with the APOGEE DR17 DistMass catalog. Our generative approach enables flexible input handling, including spectral inpainting and parameter-to-spectrum generation. On an independent test set, the model achieves a prediction scatter of $σ\approx 0.114 \, M_{\odot}$ for mass and $σ\approx 1.334$ Gyr for age. Beyond numerical accuracy, it successfully reproduces the giant branch's mass-luminosity relation and autonomously disentangles interstellar extinction from intrinsic temperature variations without explicit physical priors. It also robustly recovers missing spectral data and estimates reliable uncertainties. Validating that foundation models can internalize stellar physics from data, this physically-aware, probabilistic framework offers a powerful tool for unraveling Milky Way history using large-scale spectroscopic surveys.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2024

An adaptive parameter estimator for poor-quality spectral data of white dwarfs

White dwarfs represent the end stage for 97% of stars, making precise parameter measurement crucial for understanding stellar evolution. Traditional estimation methods involve fitting spectra or photometry, which require high-quality data. In recent years, machine learning has played a crucial role in processing spectral data due to its speed, automation, and accuracy. However, two common issues have been identified. First, most studies rely on data with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR > 10), leaving many poor-quality datasets underutilized. Second, existing machine learning models, primarily based on convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and their variants, cannot simultaneously capture both the spatial and sequential information of spectra. To address these challenges, we designed the Estimator Network (EstNet), an advanced algorithm integrating multiple techniques, including Residual Networks, Squeeze and Excitation Attention, Gated Recurrent Units, Adaptive Loss, and Monte-Carlo Dropout Layers. We conducted parameter estimation on 5,965 poor-quality white dwarf spectra (R~1800, SNR~1.17), achieving average percentage errors of 14.86% for effective temperature and 3.97% for surface gravity. These results are significantly superior to other mainstream algorithms and consistent with the outcomes of traditional theoretical spectrum fitting methods. In the future, our algorithms will be applied for large-scale parameter estimation on the Chinese Space Station Telescope and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

astro-ph.SR↗