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Patrick de Perio

Publications and source records attributed to Patrick de Perio.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Future of Artificial Intelligence for Science in Japan 2024 Community Report

This white paper summarizes scientific challenges and AI/ML research opportunities identified through the FAIRS Japan 2024 unconference process. The discussion focuses on three major physics domains: accelerator physics, cosmology and astrophysics, and neutrino physics. Although each domain has distinct scientific goals and experimental constraints, several common technical themes emerge: high-dimensional reconstruction, fast and accurate simulation, uncertainty propagation, simulation-to-data mismatch, anomaly detection, real-time decision-making, and shared infrastructure.

hep-ph

Enhancing Event Reconstruction in Hyper-Kamiokande with Machine Learning: A ResNet Implementation

The forthcoming Hyper-Kamiokande experiment requires substantially larger Monte Carlo datasets than previous experiments to satisfy stringent systematic-uncertainty requirements. While traditional maximum-likelihood reconstruction provides high-quality results, its per-event computational cost makes processing these large samples increasingly impractical. We demonstrate a neural-network-based reconstruction approach for the Hyper-Kamiokande far detector using simulated data. Single-particle events with kinetic energies from the Cherenkov threshold up to 2 GeV are propagated through the detector, with PMT charge and timing information mapped to $190\times189$ two-channel images serving as inputs to ResNet models in the WatChMaL framework. These models (i) classify events into four particle hypotheses ($e$, $\mu$, $\gamma$, $\pi^{0}$) and (ii) regress the vertex, direction, and momentum of electrons and muons. Averaged over the full kinematic range, the regression models achieve momentum resolutions of $1.35\%$ and $2.39\%$, angular resolutions of $1.25^\circ$ and $1.94^\circ$, and vertex resolutions of $28.2$ cm and $25.4$ cm, for muons and electrons respectively, broadly consistent with traditional methods. The classifier improves $e$-$\mu$, $e$-$\gamma$, and $e$-$\pi^{0}$ separation, with ROC curve areas of $0.9999992$, $0.633$, and $0.9526$. Crucially, our networks achieve inference times of 1-2 ms per event on a single GPU, yielding speed-ups of $3.2\times10^{4}$-$5.2\times10^{4}$ relative to likelihood-based reconstruction, highlighting deep learning as a scalable alternative for Hyper-Kamiokande event reconstruction.

hep-ex

End-to-end Differentiable Calibration and Reconstruction for Optical Particle Detectors

Large-scale homogeneous detectors with optical readouts are widely used in particle detection, with Cherenkov and scintillator neutrino detectors as prominent examples. Analyses in experimental physics rely on high-fidelity simulators to translate sensor-level information into physical quantities of interest. This task critically depends on accurate calibration, which aligns simulation behavior with real detector data, and on tracking, which infers particle properties from optical signals. We present the first end-to-end differentiable optical particle detector simulator, enabling simultaneous calibration and reconstruction through gradient-based optimization. Our approach unifies simulation, calibration, and tracking, which are traditionally treated as separate problems, within a single differentiable framework. We demonstrate that it achieves smooth and physically meaningful gradients across all key stages of light generation, propagation, and detection while maintaining computational efficiency. We show that gradient-based calibration and reconstruction greatly simplify existing analysis pipelines while matching or surpassing the performance of conventional non-differentiable methods in both accuracy and speed. Moreover, the framework's modularity allows straightforward adaptation to diverse detector geometries and target materials, providing a flexible foundation for experiment design and optimization. The results demonstrate the readiness of this technique for adoption in current and future optical detector experiments, establishing a new paradigm for simulation and reconstruction in particle physics.

hep-ex

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

Using Machine Learning to Improve Neutron Identification in Water Cherenkov Detectors

Water Cherenkov detectors like Super-Kamiokande, and the next generation Hyper-Kamiokande are adding gadolinium to their water to improve the detection of neutrons. By detecting neutrons in addition to the leptons in neutrino interactions, an improved separation between neutrino and anti-neutrinos, and reduced backgrounds for proton decay searches can be expected. The neutron signal itself is still small and can be confused with muon spallation and other background sources. In this paper, machine learning techniques are employed to optimize the neutron capture detection capability in the new intermediate water Cherenkov detector (IWCD) for Hyper-K. In particular, boosted decision tree (XGBoost), graph convolutional network (GCN), and dynamic graph convolutional neural network (DGCNN) models are developed and benchmarked against a statistical likelihood-based approach, achieving up to a 10% increase in classification accuracy. Characteristic features are also engineered from the datasets and analyzed using SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) to provide insight into the pivotal factors influencing event type outcomes. The dataset used in this research consisted of roughly 1.6 million simulated particle gun events, divided nearly evenly between neutron capture and a background electron source.

physics.ins-det

Variational Autoencoders for Generative Modelling of Water Cherenkov Detectors

Matter-antimatter asymmetry is one of the major unsolved problems in physics that can be probed through precision measurements of charge-parity symmetry violation at current and next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments. In this work, we demonstrate the capability of variational autoencoders and normalizing flows to approximate the generative distribution of simulated data for water Cherenkov detectors commonly used in these experiments. We study the performance of these methods and their applicability for semi-supervised learning and synthetic data generation.

physics.ins-det

Simultaneous measurement of the light and charge response of liquid xenon to low-energy nuclear recoils at multiple electric fields

Dual-phase liquid xenon (LXe) detectors lead the direct search for particle dark matter. Understanding the signal production process of nuclear recoils in LXe is essential for the interpretation of LXe based dark matter searches. Up to now, only two experiments have simultaneously measured both the light and charge yield at different electric fields, neither of which attempted to evaluate the processes leading to light and charge production. In this letter, results from a neutron calibration of liquid xenon with simultaneous light and charge detection are presented for energies from 3-74 keV, at electric fields of 0.19, 0.49, and 1.02 kV/cm. No significant field dependence of the yields is observed.

physics.ins-det

Oscillation results from T2K

The T2K collaboration has combined the $ν_μ$ disappearance and $ν_e $appearance data in a three-flavor neutrino oscillation analysis. A Markov chain Monte Carlo results in estimates of the oscillation parameters and 1D 68% Bayesian credible intervals at $δ_{CP} = 0$ as follows: $\sin^{2}θ_{23} = 0.520^{+0.045}_{-0.050}$, $\sin^{2}θ_{13} = 0.0454^{+ 0.011}_{-0.014}$ and $|Δm^{2}_{32}| = 2.57\pm0.11$, with the point of highest posterior probability in the inverted hierarchy. Recent measurements of $θ_{13}$ from reactor neutrino experiments are combined with the T2K data resulting in the following estimates: $\sin^{2}θ_{23} = 0.528^{+0.055}_{-0.038}$, $\sin^{2}θ_{13} = 0.0250 \pm 0.0026$ and $|Δm^{2}_{32}| = 2.51\pm0.11$, with the point of highest posterior probability in the normal hierarchy. Furthermore, the data exclude values of $δ_{CP}$ between 0.14$π$-0.87$π$ with 90% probability.

hep-ex

NEUT Pion Final State Interactions

The pion final state interaction model in NEUT is described. Modifications and tuning of the model are validated against neutrino and non-neutrino (pion scattering and photoproduction) data. A method for evaluating the uncertainties in the model and propagation of systematic errors in a neutrino oscillation experiment is described, using T2K as a specific example.

nucl-ex

Optical Transition Radiation Monitor for the T2K Experiment

An Optical Transition Radiation monitor has been developed for the proton beam-line of the T2K long base-line neutrino oscillation experiment. The monitor operates in the highly radioactive environment in proximity to the T2K target. It uses optical transition radiation, the light emitted from a thin metallic foil when the charged beam passes through it, to form a 2D image of a 30 GeV proton beam. One of its key features is an optical system capable of transporting the light over a large distance out of the harsh environment near the target to a lower radiation area where it is possible to operate a camera to capture this light. The monitor measures the proton beam position and width with a precision of better than 500 μm, meeting the physics requirements of the T2K experiment.

physics.ins-det