Microlensing Detection and Inference via Learned Bayes Factors

Abstract

We present a unified framework for gravitational microlensing event detection and parameter inference. Traditional pipelines use deterministic hard cuts on photometric statistics, systematically missing low-magnification events in the finite-source regime. We instead frame detection as Bayesian model comparison using Evidence Networks, which learn calibrated Bayes factors from binary-labeled simulations, and combine this with Neural Posterior Estimation (NPE) for amortized parameter inference. Both share a transformer encoder that handles irregularly-sampled time series without imputation. On simulated Roman Space Telescope data, our Evidence Network achieves $99.9\%$ detection efficiency with a false-positive rate below $6\times 10^{-4}$ on simulated data with augmentation and noise, but no astrophysical confounders. Gains are most dramatic in the extreme finite-source regime ($\ddot{I}\gtrsim 5$), where detection rates reach $\sim 95\%$ versus $\sim 65\%$ for hard cuts, precisely the short-duration free-floating planet events most constraining for formation scenarios. Our NPE provides calibrated posteriors, working towards real-time analysis at survey scale.

Accepted at ICML 2026 AI for Physics Workshop