English

SHAPE. I. A SOM-SED hybrid approach for efficient galaxy parameter estimation leveraging JWST

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-02-18 v1

Abstract

With the launch and application of next-generation ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomy has entered the era of big data, necessitating more efficient and robust data analysis methods. Most traditional parameter estimation methods are unable to reconcile differences between photometric systems. Ideally, we would like to optimally rely on high-quality observation data provided by, e.g., JWST, for calibrating and improving upcoming wide-field surveys such as the China Space Station Telescope (CSST) and Euclid. To this end, we introduce a new approach (SHAPE, SOM-SED Hybrid Approach for efficient Parameter Estimation) that can bridge different photometric systems and efficiently estimate key galaxy parameters, such as stellar mass (MM_\star) and star formation rate (SFR), leveraging data from a large and deep JWST/NIRCam and MIRI survey (PRIMER). As a test of the methodology, we focus on galaxies at z1.52.5z\sim 1.5-2.5. To mitigate discrepancies between input colors and the training set, we replace the default SOM weights with stacked SEDs from each cell, extending the applicability of our model to other photometric catalogs (e.g., COSMOS2020). By incorporating a SED library (SED Lib), we apply this JWST-calibrated model to the COSMOS2020 catalog. Despite the limited sample size and potential template-related uncertainties, SOM-derived parameters exhibit a good agreement with results from SED-fitting using extended photometry. Under identical photometric constraints from CSST and Euclid bands, our method outperforms traditional SED-fitting techniques in SFR estimation, exhibiting both a reduced bias (-0.01 vs. 0.18) and a smaller σNMAD\sigma_{\rm NMAD} (0.25 vs. 0.35). With its computational efficiency capable of processing 10610^6 sources per CPU per hour during the estimation phase, this JWST-calibrated estimator holds significant promise for next-generation wide-field surveys.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.00187,
  title  = {SHAPE. I. A SOM-SED hybrid approach for efficient galaxy parameter estimation leveraging JWST},
  author = {Zihao Wang and Tao Wang and Ke Xu and Hanwen Sun and Ruining Tian and Qi Hao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.00187},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to A&A. Comments are welcome!

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:08:51.435Z