Contributor info: Dr Ramon Winterhalder

Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Steffen Schumann, Simon Badger, Sascha Caron, Kyle Cranmer, Francesco Armando Di Bello, Etienne Dreyer, Stefano Forte, Sanmay Ganguly, Dorival Gonçalves, Eilam Gross, Theo Heimel, Gudrun Heinrich, Lukas Heinrich, Alexander Held, Stefan Höche, Jessica N. Howard, Philip Ilten, Joshua Isaacson, Timo Janßen, Stephen Jones, Marumi Kado, Michael Kagan, Gregor Kasieczka, Felix Kling, Sabine Kraml, Claudius Krause, Frank Krauss, Kevin Kröninger, Rahool Kumar Barman, Michel Luchmann, Vitaly Magerya, Daniel Maitre, Bogdan Malaescu, Fabio Maltoni, Till Martini, Olivier Mattelaer, Benjamin Nachman, Sebastian Pitz, Juan Rojo, Matthew Schwartz, David Shih, Frank Siegert, Roy Stegeman, Bob Stienen, Jesse Thaler, Rob Verheyen, Daniel Whiteson, Ramon Winterhalder, Jure Zupan

SciPost Phys. 14, 079 (2023) · published 21 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

First-principle simulations are at the heart of the high-energy physics research program. They link the vast data output of multi-purpose detectors with fundamental theory predictions and interpretation. This review illustrates a wide range of applications of modern machine learning to event generation and simulation-based inference, including conceptional developments driven by the specific requirements of particle physics. New ideas and tools developed at the interface of particle physics and machine learning will improve the speed and precision of forward simulations, handle the complexity of collision data, and enhance inference as an inverse simulation problem.

Anja Butter, Sascha Diefenbacher, Gregor Kasieczka, Benjamin Nachman, Tilman Plehn, David Shih, Ramon Winterhalder

SciPost Phys. 13, 087 (2022) · published 7 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The large data rates at the LHC require an online trigger system to select relevant collisions. Rather than compressing individual events, we propose to compress an entire data set at once. We use a normalizing flow as a deep generative model to learn the probability density of the data online. The events are then represented by the generative neural network and can be inspected offline for anomalies or used for other analysis purposes. We demonstrate our new approach for a toy model and a correlation-enhanced bump hunt.

Ramon Winterhalder, Vitaly Magerya, Emilio Villa, Stephen P. Jones, Matthias Kerner, Anja Butter, Gudrun Heinrich, Tilman Plehn

SciPost Phys. 12, 129 (2022) · published 13 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Numerical evaluations of Feynman integrals often proceed via a deformation of the integration contour into the complex plane. While valid contours are easy to construct, the numerical precision for a multi-loop integral can depend critically on the chosen contour. We present methods to optimize this contour using a combination of optimized, global complex shifts and a normalizing flow. They can lead to a significant gain in precision.

Mathias Backes, Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

SciPost Phys. 10, 089 (2021) · published 23 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Event generation with neural networks has seen significant progress recently. The big open question is still how such new methods will accelerate LHC simulations to the level required by upcoming LHC runs. We target a known bottleneck of standard simulations and show how their unweighting procedure can be improved by generative networks. This can, potentially, lead to a very significant gain in simulation speed.

Marco Bellagente, Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Armand Rousselot, Ramon Winterhalder, Lynton Ardizzone, Ullrich Köthe

SciPost Phys. 9, 074 (2020) · published 18 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

For simulations where the forward and the inverse directions have a physics meaning, invertible neural networks are especially useful. A conditional INN can invert a detector simulation in terms of high-level observables, specifically for ZW production at the LHC. It allows for a per-event statistical interpretation. Next, we allow for a variable number of QCD jets. We unfold detector effects and QCD radiation to a pre-defined hard process, again with a per-event probabilistic interpretation over parton-level phase space.

Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

SciPost Phys. Core 3, 009 (2020) · published 5 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Subtracting event samples is a common task in LHC simulation and analysis, and standard solutions tend to be inefficient. We employ generative adversarial networks to produce new event samples with a phase space distribution corresponding to added or subtracted input samples. We first illustrate for a toy example how such a network beats the statistical limitations of the training data. We then show how such a network can be used to subtract background events or to include non-local collinear subtraction events at the level of unweighted 4-vector events.

Marco Bellagente, Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

SciPost Phys. 8, 070 (2020) · published 29 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

LHC analyses directly comparing data and simulated events bear the danger of using first-principle predictions only as a black-box part of event simulation. We show how simulations, for instance, of detector effects can instead be inverted using generative networks. This allows us to reconstruct parton level information from measured events. Our results illustrate how, in general, fully conditional generative networks can statistically invert Monte Carlo simulations. As a technical by-product we show how a maximum mean discrepancy loss can be staggered or cooled.

Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

SciPost Phys. 7, 075 (2019) · published 4 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Event generation for the LHC can be supplemented by generative adversarial networks, which generate physical events and avoid highly inefficient event unweighting. For top pair production we show how such a network describes intermediate on-shell particles, phase space boundaries, and tails of distributions. In particular, we introduce the maximum mean discrepancy to resolve sharp local features. It can be extended in a straightforward manner to include for instance off-shell contributions, higher orders, or approximate detector effects.