Graph neural network prediction of infrared spectra of interstellar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

ABSTRACT Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are recognized as the primary contributors to the aromatic infrared bands (AIBs) widely observed in space. However, analysing these AIBs remains challenging because of the immense structural diversity within the PAH family, which makes the computation of reliable reference spectra difficult. To address this, we developed an efficient graph neural network (GNN) framework that can predict PAH absorption spectra up to 10 000 times faster than traditional quantum chemical methods. We evaluated four representative GNN architectures, including graph convolutional network (GCN), graph attention network (GAT), message passing neural network (MPNN), and attentive fingerprint (AFP). The AFP model is found to deliver the best overall performance and is further trained using five different spectral distance metrics as loss functions, among which the Jensen–Shannon divergence yields the most accurate and stable results. The model performs best for PAHs containing 20–40 carbon atoms, while accuracy decreases for larger molecules, reflecting the limited availability of training data. Overall, this framework offers a fast method to generate approximate reference spectra for small- to medium-sized PAHs, supporting future AIB analysis.