Make Your Training Set

In order to train a neural network, you need something to train it on!

The training data are a bunch of samples of your detailed calculation. That is: given a choice of some input parameters (e.g., a harmonic number), your detailed calculation will produce eight output parameters (the Stokes radiative transfer coefficients). The exact number of input parameters can vary depending on what particle distribution you’re modeling. Neurosynchro needs a lot of samples of this function to develop a good approximation to it.

From the standpoint of neurosynchro, the tool that you use to generate those data doesn’t matter. What matters is the format in which the training data are stored. However, it is true that neurosynchro has been designed to work with rimphony, which has sample programs that will generate training data sets in the format described below.

Attention

Read this section carefully! Neurosynchro bakes in some assumptions that might surprise you.

The training data fed to neurosynchro must be saved as a set of plain textual tables stored in a single directory. The file names must end in .txt. Each table file is line-oriented. The first line is a header, and all subsequent lines give samples of the exact calculation. For example:

s(log)       theta(lin)      p(lin)  k(lin)  time_ms(meta)   j_I(res)        alpha_I(res)    j_Q(res)        alpha_Q(res)    j_V(res)        alpha_V(res)    rho_Q(res)      rho_V(res)
1.95393e2    8.8966e-1       3.49e0  1.41e0  2.21270e3       8.42819e-35     2.26887e-8      -6.439070e-35   -1.80416e-8     1.17279e-35     3.56901e-9      3.2947e-7       3.8318e-5
6.51244e2    8.0044e-1       3.28e0  1.94e0  3.30821e3       6.88161e-36     9.03608e-10     -5.226766e-36   -7.17748e-10    6.41000e-37     9.59868e-11     2.4798e-8       1.2309e-5

The header lines gives the names of each column. Each column name includes a suffix indicating its type:

lin
An input parameter that is sampled linearly in some range. At the moment, the way in which the parameter was sampled isn’t actually used anywhere in the code. But it can be a helpful piece of information to have handy when specifying how the neural nets will be trained.
log
An input parameter that is sampled logarithmically in some range.
res
A output result from the computation.
meta
A metadata value that records some extra piece of information about the sample in question. Above, the time_ms metadata item records how many milliseconds it took for Rimphony to calculate the sample. This is useful for identifying regions of parameter space where the code runs into numerical problems.

So, in the example above, there are four input parameters. The detailed calculation shows that when the harmonic number s ≃ 195, observing angle theta ≃ 0.9 radians, energy power-law index p ≃ 3.5, and pitch-angle distribution index k ≃ 1.4, the emission coefficient j_I ≃ 8 × 10 -35 erg s -1 cm -2 Hz -1 sr -1. The rimphony calculation of that result took about 2.2 seconds.

Something like 100,000 rows is enough to train some good neural networks. It doesn’t matter how many different files those rows are split into.

Tip

Neurosynchro takes a directory of files as an input, rather than one specific file, since the former is easier to create on a big HPC cluster where you can launch 1,000 jobs to compute coefficients for you in parallel.

Tip

Each individual input file can be easily loaded into a Pandas data frame with the function call pandas.read_table().

Important assumptions

In the example above, there are just four input parameters: s, theta, p, and k. These are likely not the usual parameters that you see when thinking about synchrotron radiation. There’s an important reason for this!

Neurosynchro bakes in three key assumptions about how synchrotron radiation works:

  1. You must compute all of your coefficients at an observing frequency of 1 Hz! This is because synchrotron coefficients scale simply with frequency: emission coefficients linearly with ν, absorption coefficients as 1/ν. So the observing frequency doesn’t actually need to be part of the neural network regression.
  2. You must compute all of your coefficients at an energetic particle density of 1 per cubic centimeter! Here too, all the synchrotron coefficients scale simply with the energetic particle density (namely, they all scale linearly). Once again this means that the energetic particle density doesn´t actually need to be part of the regression.
  3. You only need to do computations where the angle between the line of sight and the magnetic field, θ, is less than 90°. Neurosynchro assumes that all parameters are symmetric with regards to θ = 90° except the Stokes V components, which negate.

Given those assumptions, almost every part of neurosynchro expects that the following input parameters will exist:

s

The harmonic number of interest, such that:

\[\nu_\text{obs} = s \nu_\text{cyc} = s \frac{e B}{2 \pi m_e c}\]
theta
The angle between the direction of radiation propagation and the local magnetic field, in radians.

Given the known ways in which synchrotron coefficients scale, the standard quartet of input parameters nu, theta, n_e, and B can be reduced to these two parameters, plus scalings that are known a priori. In the example above, the two remaining parameters p and k relate to the shape of the particle distribution function.

On the output side, neurosynchro applies some more assumptions to ensure that it always produces physically sensible output (i.e., that the polarized Stokes emission parameters are never bigger than the total-intensity Stokes emission parameter). It also uses the standard linear polarization basis in which Stokes Q is aligned with the magnetic field, which means that the Stokes U parameters are zero by construction (see, for example, Shcherbakov & Huang (2011), DOI 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17502.x, equation 17). So unless you are doing something very unusual, your tables should always contain eight output results:

j_I
The calculated Stokes I emission coefficient, in erg s -1 cm -2 Hz -1 sr -1.
j_Q
The Stokes Q emission coefficient, in the same units.
j_V
The Stokes V emission coefficient, in the same units.
alpha_I
The calculated Stokes I absorption coefficient, in cm -1.
alpha_Q
The Stokes Q absorption coefficient, in the same units.
alpha_V
The Stokes V absorption coefficient, in the same units.
rho_Q
The Faraday conversion coefficient (mixing Stokes U and Stokes V), in the same units.
rho_V
The Faraday rotation coefficient (mixing Stokes Q and Stokes U), in the same units.

Next: transform your training set.