A data-driven Bayesian approach for finding young stellar populations in early-type galaxies from their UV-optical spectra

We present the results of a novel application of Bayesian modelling techniques, which, although purely data driven, have a physically interpretable result, and will be useful as an efficient data mining tool. We base our studies on the UV-to-optical spectra (observed and synthetic) of early-type galaxies. A probabilistic latent variable architecture is formulated, and a rigorous Bayesian methodology is employed for solving the inverse modelling problem from the available data. A powerful aspect of our formalism is that it allows us to recover a limited fraction of missing data due to incomplete spectral coverage, as well as to handle observational errors in a principled way. We apply this method to a sample of 21 well-studied early-type spectra, with known star-formation histories. We find that our data-driven Bayesian modelling allows us to identify those early-types which contain a significant stellar population <~ 1 Gyr old. This method would therefore be a very useful tool for automatically discovering various interesting sub-classes of galaxies. (abridged)