English

AS-Bridge: A Bidirectional Generative Framework Bridging Next-Generation Astronomical Surveys

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2026-03-13 v1 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Abstract

The upcoming decade of observational cosmology will be shaped by large sky surveys, such as the ground-based LSST at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the space-based Euclid mission. While they promise an unprecedented view of the Universe across depth, resolution, and wavelength, their differences in observational modality, sky coverage, point-spread function, and scanning cadence make joint analysis beneficial, but also challenging. To facilitate joint analysis, we introduce A(stronomical)S(urvey)-Bridge, a bidirectional generative model that translates between ground- and space-based observations. AS-Bridge learns a diffusion model that employs a stochastic Brownian Bridge process between the LSST and Euclid observations. The two surveys have overlapping sky regions, where we can explicitly model the conditional probabilistic distribution between them. We show that this formulation enables new scientific capabilities beyond single-survey analysis, including faithful probabilistic predictions of missing survey observations and inter-survey detection of rare events. These results establish the feasibility of inter-survey generative modeling. AS-Bridge is therefore well-positioned to serve as a complementary component of future LSST-Euclid joint data pipelines, enhancing the scientific return once data from both surveys become available. Data and code are available at \href{https://github.com/ZHANG7DC/AS-Bridge}{https://github.com/ZHANG7DC/AS-Bridge}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.11928,
  title  = {AS-Bridge: A Bidirectional Generative Framework Bridging Next-Generation Astronomical Surveys},
  author = {Dichang Zhang and Yixuan Shao and Simon Birrer and Dimitris Samaras},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.11928},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures. Code available at https://github.com/ZHANG7DC/AS-Bridge

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:16:43.277Z