arXiv subjects

Diogo R. Ferreira

Publications and source records attributed to Diogo R. Ferreira.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Sparse and Truncated State Vector Simulator for Peaked Circuits

In a class of quantum circuits known as peaked circuits, the goal is to predict the most probable bit string at the output of the circuit. Since these circuits are designed to have a sharp peak in their output distribution, in principle it should be possible to simulate them using a truncated state vector with a limited number of terms, or a fraction of the total probability mass. This approximate simulation can be carried out on a classical computer with a sparse representation that stores only the nonzero amplitudes of the state vector, in contrast to the dense representations that are common in most quantum simulators. For efficiency, all operations on the state vector should be vectorized to the furthest possible extent and, if available, hardware acceleration can also be used. This work describes how these requirements were met in an open-source implementation, and discusses its performance and limitations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Machine Learning for Chemistry Reduction in N$_2$-H$_2$ Low-Temperature Plasmas

Low-temperature plasmas are partially ionized gases, where ions and neutrals coexist in a highly reactive environment. This creates a rich chemistry, which is often difficult to understand in its full complexity. In this work, we develop a machine learning model to identify the most important reactions in a given chemical scheme. The training data are an initial distribution of species and a final distribution of species, which can be obtained from either experiments or simulations. The model is trained to provide a set of reaction weights, which become the basis for reducing the chemical scheme. The approach is applied to N$_2$-H$_2$ plasmas, created by an electric discharge at low pressure, where the main goal is to produce NH$_3$. The interplay of multiple species, as well as of volume and surface reactions, make this chemistry especially challenging to understand. Reducing the chemical scheme via the proposed model helps identify the main chemical pathways.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2023

Disruption Prediction in Fusion Devices through Feature Extraction and Logistic Regression

This document describes an approach used in the Multi-Machine Disruption Prediction Challenge for Fusion Energy by ITU, a data science competition which ran from September to November 2023, on the online platform Zindi. The competition involved data from three fusion devices - C-Mod, HL-2A, and J-TEXT - with most of the training data coming from the last two, and the test data coming from the first one. Each device has multiple diagnostics and signals, and it turns out that a critical issue in this competition was to identify which signals, and especially which features from those signals, were most relevant to achieve accurate predictions. The approach described here is based on extracting features from signals, and then applying logistic regression on top of those features. Each signal is treated as a separate predictor and, in the end, a combination of such predictors achieved the first place on the leaderboard.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2021

Using HPC infrastructures for deep learning applications in fusion research

In the fusion community, the use of high performance computing (HPC) has been mostly dominated by heavy-duty plasma simulations, such as those based on particle-in-cell and gyrokinetic codes. However, there has been a growing interest in applying machine learning for knowledge discovery on top of large amounts of experimental data collected from fusion devices. In particular, deep learning models are especially hungry for accelerated hardware, such as graphics processing units (GPUs), and it is becoming more common to find those models competing for the same resources that are used by simulation codes, which can be either CPU- or GPU-bound. In this paper, we give examples of deep learning models -- such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and variational autoencoders -- that can be used for a variety of tasks, including image processing, disruption prediction, and anomaly detection on diagnostics data. In this context, we discuss how deep learning can go from using a single GPU on a single node to using multiple GPUs across multiple nodes in a large-scale HPC infrastructure.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2021

The Tracking Machine Learning challenge : Accuracy phase

This paper reports the results of an experiment in high energy physics: using the power of the "crowd" to solve difficult experimental problems linked to tracking accurately the trajectory of particles in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This experiment took the form of a machine learning challenge organized in 2018: the Tracking Machine Learning Challenge (TrackML). Its results were discussed at the competition session at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS 2018). Given 100.000 points, the participants had to connect them into about 10.000 arcs of circles, following the trajectory of particles issued from very high energy proton collisions. The competition was difficult with a dozen front-runners well ahead of a pack. The single competition score is shown to be accurate and effective in selecting the best algorithms from the domain point of view. The competition has exposed a diversity of approaches, with various roles for Machine Learning, a number of which are discussed in the document

hep-ex↗

arXiv2020

Deep Learning for the Analysis of Disruption Precursors based on Plasma Tomography

The JET baseline scenario is being developed to achieve high fusion performance and sustained fusion power. However, with higher plasma current and higher input power, an increase in pulse disruptivity is being observed. Although there is a wide range of possible disruption causes, the present disruptions seem to be closely related to radiative phenomena such as impurity accumulation, core radiation, and radiative collapse. In this work, we focus on bolometer tomography to reconstruct the plasma radiation profile and, on top of it, we apply anomaly detection to identify the radiation patterns that precede major disruptions. The approach makes extensive use of machine learning. First, we train a surrogate model for plasma tomography based on matrix multiplication, which provides a fast method to compute the plasma radiation profiles across the full extent of any given pulse. Then, we train a variational autoencoder to reproduce the radiation profiles by encoding them into a latent distribution and subsequently decoding them. As an anomaly detector, the variational autoencoder struggles to reproduce unusual behaviors, which includes not only the actual disruptions but their precursors as well. These precursors are identified based on an analysis of the anomaly score across all baseline pulses in two recent campaigns at JET.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2019

Deep Learning for Plasma Tomography and Disruption Prediction from Bolometer Data

The use of deep learning is facilitating a wide range of data processing tasks in many areas. The analysis of fusion data is no exception, since there is a need to process large amounts of data collected from the diagnostic systems attached to a fusion device. Fusion data involves images and time series, and are a natural candidate for the use of convolutional and recurrent neural networks. In this work, we describe how CNNs can be used to reconstruct the plasma radiation profile, and we discuss the potential of using RNNs for disruption prediction based on the same input data. Both approaches have been applied at JET using data from a multi-channel diagnostic system. Similar approaches can be applied to other fusion devices and diagnostics.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2018

Applications of Deep Learning to Nuclear Fusion Research

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun, and it is one of the best hopes to achieve a virtually unlimited energy source for the future of humanity. However, reproducing sustainable nuclear fusion reactions here on Earth is a tremendous scientific and technical challenge. Special devices -- called tokamaks -- have been built around the world, with JET (Joint European Torus, in the UK) being the largest tokamak currently in operation. Such devices confine matter and heat it up to extremely high temperatures, creating a plasma where fusion reactions begin to occur. JET has over one hundred diagnostic systems to monitor what happens inside the plasma, and each 30-second experiment (or pulse) generates about 50 GB of data. In this work, we show how convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can be used to reconstruct the 2D plasma profile inside the device based on data coming from those diagnostics. We also discuss how recurrent neural networks (RNNs) can be used to predict plasma disruptions, which are one of the major problems affecting tokamaks today. Training of such networks is done on NVIDIA GPUs.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2018

Full-pulse Tomographic Reconstruction with Deep Neural Networks

Plasma tomography consists in reconstructing the 2D radiation profile in a poloidal cross-section of a fusion device, based on line-integrated measurements along several lines of sight. The reconstruction process is computationally intensive and, in practice, only a few reconstructions are usually computed per pulse. In this work, we trained a deep neural network based on a large collection of sample tomograms that have been produced at JET over several years. Once trained, the network is able to reproduce those results with high accuracy. More importantly, it can compute all the tomographic reconstructions for a given pulse in just a few seconds. This makes it possible to visualize several phenomena -- such as plasma heating, disruptions and impurity transport -- over the course of a discharge.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2017

Deep learning for plasma tomography using the bolometer system at JET

Deep learning is having a profound impact in many fields, especially those that involve some form of image processing. Deep neural networks excel in turning an input image into a set of high-level features. On the other hand, tomography deals with the inverse problem of recreating an image from a number of projections. In plasma diagnostics, tomography aims at reconstructing the cross-section of the plasma from radiation measurements. This reconstruction can be computed with neural networks. However, previous attempts have focused on learning a parametric model of the plasma profile. In this work, we use a deep neural network to produce a full, pixel-by-pixel reconstruction of the plasma profile. For this purpose, we use the overview bolometer system at JET, and we introduce an up-convolutional network that has been trained and tested on a large set of sample tomograms. We show that this network is able to reproduce existing reconstructions with a high level of accuracy, as measured by several metrics.

stat.ML↗