Artificial intelligence applied to the automatic analysis of absorption spectra. Objective measurement of the fine structure constant

Understand

A new and automated method is presented for the analysis of high-resolution absorption spectra.

• Three established numerical methods are unified into one "artificial intelligence" process: a genetic algorithm (GVPFIT); non-linear least-squares with parameter constraints (VPFIT); and Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA).
• The method has broad application but here we apply it specifically to the problem of measuring the fine structure constant at high redshift.
• For this we need objectivity and reproducibility.