SpecPT (Spectroscopy Pre-trained Transformer) Model for Extragalactic Spectroscopy. I. Architecture and Automated Redshift Measurement

Abstract We introduce the Spectroscopy Pre-trained Transformer (SpecPT), a transformer-based model designed to analyze spectroscopic data, with applications in spectrum reconstruction and redshift measurement. Using the Early Data Release (EDR) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, we evaluate SpecPT’s performance on two distinct data sets: the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) and Emission Line Galaxy (ELG) samples. SpecPT successfully reconstructs spectra, accurately capturing emission lines, absorption features, and continuum shapes while effectively reducing noise. For redshift prediction, SpecPT achieves competitive accuracy, with normalized median absolute deviation values of 0.0006 and 0.0008, and catastrophic outlier fractions of 0.20% and 0.80% for BGS and ELG, respectively. Notably, SpecPT performs consistently well across the full redshift range (0 < z < 1.6), demonstrating its versatility and robustness. By leveraging its learned latent representations, SpecPT lays the groundwork for a foundational spectroscopic model, with potential applications in outlier detection, interstellar medium property estimation, and transfer learning to other data sets. This work represents a first step in building a generalized framework for spectroscopic analysis, capable of scaling to the full DESI data set and beyond.