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Simulation-based inference of galaxy properties from JWST pixels

P Iglesias-Navarro, M Huertas-Company… - arXiv preprint arXiv …, 2025 - arxiv.org
Astrophysics paper astro-ph.GA Suggest

… Our method employs simulation-based inference to enable rapid posterior sampling across galaxy pixels, leveraging the unprecedented spatial resolution, wavelength …

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@article{2506.04336v2,
Author        = {Patricia Iglesias-Navarro and Marc Huertas-Company and Pablo Pérez-González and Johan H. Knapen and ChangHoon Hahn and Anton M. Koekemoer and Steven L. Finkelstein and Natalia Villanueva and Andrés Asensio Ramos},
Title         = {Simulation-based inference of galaxy properties from JWST pixels},
Eprint        = {2506.04336v2},
ArchivePrefix = {arXiv},
PrimaryClass  = {astro-ph.GA},
Abstract      = {We present an efficient Bayesian SED-fitting framework tailored to
multiwavelength pixel photometry from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic
Survey (JADES). Our method employs simulation-based inference to enable rapid
posterior sampling across galaxy pixels, leveraging the unprecedented spatial
resolution, wavelength coverage, and depth provided by the survey. It is
trained on synthetic photometry generated from MILES stellar population models,
incorporating both parametric and non-parametric SFHs, realistic noise, and
JADES-like filter sensitivity thresholds. We validate this amortised inference
approach on mock datasets, achieving robust and well-calibrated posterior
distributions, with an $R^2$ score of 0.99 for stellar mass. Applying our
pipeline to real observations, we derive spatially resolved maps of stellar
population properties down to $\mathrm{S/N}_{\rm{pixel}}=5$ (averaged over
F277W, F356W, F444W) for 1083 JADES galaxies and ~2 million pixels with
spectroscopic redshifts. These maps enable the identification of dusty or
starburst regions and offer insights into mass growth and the structural
assembly. We assess the outshining phenomenon by comparing pixel-based and
integrated stellar mass estimates, finding limited impact only in low-mass
galaxies ($<10^8M_{\odot}$) but systematic differences of ~0.20 dex linked to
SFH priors. With an average posterior sampling speed of $10^{-4}$ seconds per
pixel and a total inference time of ~1 CPU-day for the full dataset, our model
offers a scalable solution for extracting high-fidelity stellar population
properties from HST+JWST datasets, opening the way for statistical studies at
sub-galactic scales.},
Year          = {2025},
Month         = {Jun},
Url           = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04336v2},
File          = {2506.04336v2.pdf}
}

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