| Abstract: | PLS (Partial Least Squares regression) is introduced into an automatic esti-mation of fundamental stellar spectral parameters. It extracts the most correlative spec-tral component to the parameters (Teff, log g and Fe/H]), and sets up a linear regres-sion function from spectra to the corresponding parameters. Considering the properties of stellar spectra and the PLS algorithm, we present a piecewise PLS regression method for estimation of stellar parameters, which is composed of one PLS model for Teff, and seven PLS models for log g and Fe/H] estimation. Its performance is investigated by large experiments on flux calibrated spectra and continuum normalized spectra at dif-ferent signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and resolutions. The results show that the piecewise PLS method is robust for spectra at the medium resolution of 0.23 nm. For low resolu-tion 0.5 nm and 1 nm spectra, it achieves competitive results at higher SNR. Experiments using ELODIE spectra of 0.23 nm resolution illustrate that our piecewise PLS models trained with MILES spectra are efficient for O ～ G stars: for flux calibrated spectra, the systematic offsets are 3.8%, 0.14dex, and -0.09 dex for Teff, log g and Fe/H], with error scatters of 5.2%, 0.44 dex and 0.38 dex, respectively; for continuum normalized spectra, the systematic offsets are 3.8%, 0.12dex, and -0.13 dex for Teff, log g and Fe/H], with error scatters of 5.2%, 0.49 dex and 0.41 dex, respectively. The PLS method is rapid, easy to use and does not rely as strongly on the tightness of a parameter grid of templates to reach high precision as Artificial Neural Networks or minimum distance methods do. |
