A Projected Nesterov-Kaczmarz Approach to Stellar Population-Kinematic Distribution Reconstruction in Extragalactic Archaeology

In this paper, we consider the problem of reconstructing a galaxy's stellar population-kinematic distribution function from optical integral field unit measurements. These quantities are connected via a high-dimensional integral equation. To solve this problem, we propose a projected Nesterov-Kaczmarz reconstruction method, which efficiently leverages the problem structure and incorporates physical prior information such as smoothness and nonnegativity constraints. To test the perfor-mance of our reconstruction approach, we apply it to a dataset simulated from a known ground truth density, and validate it by comparing our recoveries to those obtained by the widely used pPXF software.

Automated summary

In this paper, the problem of reconstructing a galaxy's stellar population-kinematic distribution function from optical integral field unit measurements is investigated. A projected Nesterov-Kaczmarz reconstruction method is proposed to efficiently solve the high-dimensional integral equation and incorporate physical prior information. The performance of the reconstruction approach is tested using a simulated dataset and compared to the widely used pPXF software.