Exoplanet Atmosphere Spectral Sensitivity Analysis with PICASO : Jacobians, Linear-Gaussian Approximations, and Information Content

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ID: 329370
2026
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Abstract
Abstract Designing observatory and instrument architectures for complex missions like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) requires a rapid and rigorous mathematical framework to evaluate trade-offs across bandpass, spectral resolution, and signal-to-noise regimes. While full Bayesian atmospheric retrievals are the gold standard for atmospheric inference, they are too computationally expensive to explore this full parameter space. Here, we present a sensitivity analysis and retrieval diagnostic toolkit within the open-source code PICASO. The core addition to the code base is a flexible solution for computing finite-difference Jacobian matrices, which provides a local linearization of the forward model. These Jacobian matrices characterize the sensitivity of the spectrum (either reflected, thermal, or transmission) to perturbations in any atmospheric state parameter, such as molecular abundances. Given the Jacobian for a certain reference atmosphere, our toolkit provides a suite of analytic diagnostic quantities under Gaussian assumptions for the prior, likelihood, and posterior. These include Fisher-matrix-based estimates of 1σ constraint intervals of atmospheric parameters, averaging kernels, singular-value-decomposition diagnostics for parameter degeneracies, and an information-content metric. We validate the results of our toolkit by comparing them to that of a full Bayesian retrieval of an Earth-like planet with an HWO-like facility. We show that our metrics can provide rapid understanding of model parameter sensitivity and that local linear-Gaussian approximations can diagnose dominant degeneracies seen retrievals as well as provide first order estimates of posterior probability distributions. Ultimately, this provides the community with a complementary toolkit for optimizing instrument design and conducting spectral sensitivity diagnostics.
Reference Key
openalex_W7213974401 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Natasha E. Batalha, Nicholas F Wogan
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Journal RAS Techniques and Instruments
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/rasti/rzag070
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/rasti/rzag070
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