English

Unlocking 21cm Cosmology with SBI: A Beginner friendly NRE for Inference of Astrophysical Parameters

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-11-21 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

The 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen is a promising probe of the early Universe, yet extracting astrophysical parameters from its power spectrum remains a major challenge. We present a beginner-friendly PyTorch pipeline for Marginal Neural Ratio Estimation (MNRE), a Simulation-Based Inference (SBI) method that bypasses explicit likelihoods. Using 21cmFAST simulations, we show that MNRE can recover key astrophysical parameters such as the ionizing efficiency ζ\zeta and X-ray luminosity LXL_X directly from power spectra. Our implementation prioritizes transparency and accessibility, offering a practical entry point for new researchers in 21-cm cosmology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.06834,
  title  = {Unlocking 21cm Cosmology with SBI: A Beginner friendly NRE for Inference of Astrophysical Parameters},
  author = {Bisweswar Sen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.06834},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

This paper has a critical error in the definition of SBI. Even it states explicit use of SBI the paper is rudimentary and inconclusive. This paper was done as a part of undergraduate project so is immature