Astronomy & Astrophysics Seminar: Quantum Clustering and its Application to Asteroid Spectral Taxonomy

Abstract:

Quantum clustering (QC) is an algorithm inspired by qunatum mechanics for finding structure in high-dimensional data. It was shown in the past to apply well to data sets of physical origin. The algorithm will be discussed, and a new equivalent formulation of it will be presented which incorporates entropy instead of the qunatum potential. Also, it will be shown how to use QC as an agglomerative hierarchial clustering algorithm. 

As a showcase for using QC, it was applied to the problem of asteroid spectral taxonomy. Measurements of reflectance spectra of asteroids in the visual and near infrared ranges reveal structure and variation among the different asteroids. The variation can be attributed to the different surface composition of the asteroids. The results of QC on this data will be presented and compared with a previous taxonomy.

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Sara Beck