Andrew Chappell | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Building an AI-native Research Ecosystem for Experimental Particle Physics: A Community Vision

Experimental particle physics seeks to understand the universe by probing its fundamental particles and forces and exploring how they govern the large-scale processes that shape cosmic evolution. This whitepaper presents a vision for how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can accelerate discovery in this field. We outline grand challenges that must be addressed to enable transformative breakthroughs and describe how current and planned experimental facilities can implement this vision to advance our understanding of the vast and complex physical world from the smallest to the largest scales. We show how facilities currently under construction, such as the HL-LHC, DUNE and soon EIC, can both benefit from and serve as proving grounds for this vision, while also enabling a longer-term goal for how future experiments -- like FCC-ee at CERN, IceCube-Gen2, a Muon Collider in the U.S., and smaller to mid-scale projects -- can be fully AI-native. We describe how a truly national-scale collaboration, jointly managed across large funding partners, and involving both DOE laboratories and universities, can make this happen.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2022

Application of Transfer Learning to Neutrino Interaction Classification

Training deep neural networks using simulations typically requires very large numbers of simulated events. This can be a large computational burden and a limitation in the performance of the deep learning algorithm when insufficient numbers of events can be produced. We investigate the use of transfer learning, where a set of simulated images are used to fine tune a model trained on generic image recognition tasks, to the specific use case of neutrino interaction classification in a liquid argon time projection chamber. A ResNet18, pre-trained on photographic images, was fine-tuned using simulated neutrino images and when trained with one hundred thousand training events reached an F1 score of $0.896 \pm 0.002$ compared to $0.836 \pm 0.004$ from a randomly-initialised network trained with the same training sample. The transfer-learned networks also demonstrate lower bias as a function of energy and more balanced performance across different interaction types.

hep-ex↗