Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Understanding the Effects of Systematics in Exoplanetary Atmospheric
  Retrievals   Retrieval of exoplanetary atmospheric properties from their transmission
spectra commonly assumes that the errors in the data are Gaussian and
independent. However, non-Gaussian noise can occur due to instrumental or
stellar systematics and merging discrete datasets. We investigate the effect of
correlated noise and constrain the potential biases incurred in the retrieved
posteriors. We simulate multiple noise instances of synthetic data and perform
retrievals to obtain statistics of goodness-of-retrieval for varying noise
models. We find that correlated noise allows for overfitting the spectrum,
thereby yielding better goodness-of-fit on average but degrading the overall
accuracy of retrievals. In particular, correlated noise can manifest as an
apparent non-Rayleigh slope in the optical range, leading to an incorrect
estimate of cloud/haze parameters. We also find that higher precision causes
correlated results to be further off from the input values in terms of
estimated errors. As such, we emphasize that caution must be taken in analyzing
retrieved posteriors and that estimated parameter uncertainties are best
understood as lower limits. Finally, we show that while correlated noise cannot
be be reliably distinguished with HST observations, inferring its presence and
strength may be possible with JWST observations.

33
The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
36
The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
20
The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
9
The categories of this paper are: nlin
12
The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an
18
The categories of this paper are: econ
16
The categories of this paper are: stat
30
The categories of this paper are: q-alg
24
The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
8
The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
28
The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
4
The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
31
The categories of this paper are: ao-sci