Speaker
Eric Putney
Description
Density estimation utilizing normalizing flows enables novel data-driven analyses of galactic dynamics. We train Masked Autoregressive Flows on the kinematic coordinates of 6 million nearby bright stars from the Gaia DR3 catalog within 4 kpc of the Solar location to learn their underlying phase space distribution f(x,v). Assuming dynamic equilibrium, we use f to estimate the local acceleration and mass density field via the collisionless Boltzmann equation. We present a minimal-assumption and model-free measurement of the gravitational acceleration and dark matter mass density in the solar neighborhood.
Primary authors
Eric Putney
Sung Hak Lim
(Rutgers University)
