Spatio-Spectroscopic Representation Learning using Unsupervised Convolutional Long-Short Term Memory Networks

Abstract

Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) surveys offer a unique new landscape in which to learn in both spatial and spectroscopic dimensions and could help uncover previously unknown insights into galaxy evolution. In this work, we demonstrate a new unsupervised deep learning framework using Convolutional Long-Short Term Memory Network Autoencoders to encode generalized feature representations across both spatial and spectroscopic dimensions spanning $19$ optical emission lines (3800A $<\hat{I}»<$ 8000A) among a sample of $\sim 9000$ galaxies from the MaNGA IFS survey. As a demonstrative exercise, we assess our model on a sample of $290$ Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and highlight scientifically interesting characteristics of some highly anomalous AGN.

This manuscript was previously submitted to ICML for peer review. Reviewers noted that while the underlying VAE-based architecture builds on established methods, its application to spatially-resolved IFS data is promising for unsupervised representation learning in astronomy. This version is released for community visibility. Reviewer decisions: Weak accept and Weak reject (Final: Reject)