English

The miniJPAS survey quasar selection V: combined algorithm

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-01-28 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

Aims. Quasar catalogues from narrow-band photometric data are used in a variety of applications, including targeting for spectroscopic follow-up, measurements of supermassive black hole masses, or Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. Here, we present the final quasar catalogue, including redshift estimates, from the miniJPAS Data Release constructed using several flavours of machine-learning algorithms. Methods. In this work, we use a machine learning algorithm to classify quasars, optimally combining the output of 8 individual algorithms. We assess the relative importance of the different classifiers. We include results from 3 different redshift estimators to also provide improved photometric redshifts. We compare our final catalogue against both simulated data and real spectroscopic data. Our main comparison metric is the f1f_1 score, which balances the catalogue purity and completeness. Results. We evaluate the performance of the combined algorithm using synthetic data. In this scenario, the combined algorithm outperforms the rest of the codes, reaching f1=0.88f_1=0.88 and f1=0.79f_1=0.79 for high- and low-z quasars (with z2.1z\geq2.1 and z<2.1z<2.1, respectively) down to magnitude r=23.5r=23.5. We further evaluate its performance against real spectroscopic data, finding different performances. We conclude that our simulated data is not realistic enough and that a new version of the mocks would improve the performance. Our redshift estimates on mocks suggest a typical uncertainty of σNMAD=0.11\sigma_{\rm NMAD} =0.11, which, according to our results with real data, could be significantly smaller (as low as σNMAD=0.02\sigma_{\rm NMAD}=0.02). We note that the data sample is still not large enough for a full statistical consideration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.11380,
  title  = {The miniJPAS survey quasar selection V: combined algorithm},
  author = {Ignasi Pérez-Ràfols and L. Raul Abramo and Ginés Martínez-Solaeche and Natália V. N. Rodrigues and Matthew M. Pieri and Marina Burjalès-del-Amo and Maria Escolà-Gallinat and Montserrat Ferré-Abad and Mireia Isern-Vizoso and Jailson Alcaniz and Narciso Benitez and Silvia Bonoli and Saulo Carneiro and Javier Cenarro and David Cristóbal-Hornillos and Renato Dupke and Alessandro Ederoclite and Rosa María González Delgado and Siddhartha Gurung-Lopez and Antonio Hernán-Caballero and Carlos Hernández-Monteagudo and Carlos López-Sanjuan and Antonio Marín-Franch and Valerio Marra and Claudia Mendes de Oliveira and Mariano Moles and Laerte Sodré and Keith Taylor and Jesús Varela and Héctor Vázquez Ramió},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.11380},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Submitted to A&A, 14 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:02:29.499Z