SHAM-OT: rapid subhalo abundance matching with optimal transport
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) is widely used for connecting galaxies to dark matter haloes. In SHAM, galaxies and (sub-)haloes are sorted according to their mass (or mass proxy) and matched by their rank order. In this work, we show that SHAM is the solution of the optimal transport (OT) problem on empirical distributions (samples or catalogues) for any metric transport cost function. In the limit of large number of samples, it converges to the solution of the OT problem between continuous distributions. We propose SHAM-OT: a formulation of abundance matching where the halo–galaxy relation is obtained as the optimal transport plan between galaxy and halo mass functions. By working directly on these (discretized) functions, SHAM-OT eliminates the need for sampling or sorting and is solved using efficient OT algorithms at negligible compute and memory cost. Scatter in the galaxy–halo relation can be naturally incorporated through regularization of the transport plan. SHAM-OT can easily be generalized to multiple marginal distributions. We validate our method using analytical tests with varying cosmology and luminosity function parameters, and on simulated halo catalogues. The efficiency of SHAM-OT makes it particularly advantageous for Bayesian inference that requires marginalization over stellar mass or luminosity function uncertainties.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".