Machine learning applied to multifrequency data in astrophysics: blazar classification

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study of machine learning (ML) techniques for the autonomous classification of astrophysical sources is of great interest, and we explore its applications in the context of a multifrequency data-frame. We test the use of supervised ML to classify blazars according to its synchrotron peak frequency, either lower or higher than 1015 Hz. We select a sample with 4178 blazars labelled as 1279 high synchrotron peak (HSP: $\rm \nu$-peak > 1015 Hz) and 2899 low synchrotron peak (LSP: $\rm \nu$-peak < 1015 Hz). A set of multifrequency features were defined to represent each source that includes spectral slopes ($\alpha _{\nu _1, \nu _2}$) between the radio, infra-red, optical, and X-ray bands, also considering IR colours. We describe the optimization of five ML classification algorithms that classify blazars into LSP or HSP: Random forests (RFs), support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbours (KNN), Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB), and the Ludwig auto-ML framework. In our particular case, the SVM algorithm had the best performance, reaching 93 per cent of balanced accuracy. A joint-feature permutation test revealed that the spectral slopes alpha-radio-infrared (IR) and alpha-radio-optical are the most relevant for the ML modelling, followed by the IR colours. This work shows that ML algorithms can distinguish multifrequency spectral characteristics and handle the classification of blazars into LSPs and HSPs. It is a hint for the potential use of ML for the autonomous determination of broadband spectral parameters (as the synchrotron ν-peak), or even to search for new blazars in all-sky data bases.