Predicting galaxy bias using machine learning

Abstract

Understanding how galaxies trace the underlying matter density field is essential for characterizing the influence of the large-scale structure on galaxy formation, being therefore a key ingredient in observational cosmology. This connection, commonly described through the galaxy bias, $b$, can be studied effectively using machine learning (ML) techniques, which offer strong predictive capabilities and can capture non-linear relationships. We aim to incorporate the linear bias parameter assigned to individual galaxies into a ML framework, quantify its dependence on various halo and environmental properties, and evaluate whether different algorithms can accurately predict this parameter and reproduce the scatter in several bias relations. We use data from the IllustrisTNG300 simulation, including the distance to different cosmic-web structures computed with DisPerSE. These data are complemented with an object-by-object estimator of the large-scale linear bias ($b_i$), providing the individual contribution of each galaxy to the bias of the entire population. Our ML framework uses three models to predict $b_i$: a Random Forest Regressor, a Neural Network and a probabilistic method (Normalizing Flows). We recover the full hierarchy of galaxy bias dependencies, showing that the most informative features are the overdensities, particularly $δ_8$, followed by the distances to cosmic-web structures and selected internal halo properties, most notably $z_{1/2}$. We also demonstrate that Normalizing Flows clearly outperform deterministic methods in predicting galaxy bias, including its joint distributions with galaxy properties, owing to their ability to capture the intrinsic variance associated with the stochastic nature of the matter-halo-galaxy connection. Our ML framework provides a foundation for future efforts to measure individual bias with upcoming spectroscopic surveys.