A new approach to the optimal target selection problem

Elson, E C; Bassett, B A; van der Heyden, K; Vilakazi, Z Z

A new approach to the optimal target selection problem

Journal Article

2007

Journal Title

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Link to Journal

https://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20065081

Department

Department of Physics

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

Context.This paper addresses a common problem in astronomy and cosmology: to optimally select a subset of targets from a larger catalog. A specific example is the selection of targets from an imaging survey for multi-object spectrographic follow-up.Aims.We present a new heuristic optimisation algorithm, HYBRID, for this purpose and undertake detailed studies of its performance.Methods.HYBRID combines elements of the simulated annealing, MCMC and particle-swarm methods and is particularly successful in cases where the survey landscape has multiple curvature or clustering scales.Results.HYBRID consistently outperforms the other methods, especially in high-dimensionality spaces with many extrema. This means many fewer simulations must be run to reach a given performance confidence level and implies very significant advantages in solving complex or computationally expensive optimisation problems.Conclusions.HYBRID outperforms both MCMC and SA in all cases including optimisation of high dimensional continuous surfaces indicating that HYBRID is useful far beyond the specific problem of optimal target selection. Future work will apply HYBRID to target selection for the new 10 m Southern African Large Telescope in South Africa.