让物理实验中的筛选规则可学习、可解释,兼具智能与透明。
Learnable cut flow for high energy physics
- 用可微分的神经网络替代传统人工调参的筛选流程。
- 能自动识别关键特征并合理分配重要性,对冗余特征鲁棒。
- 适合需要解释性的高能物理数据分析,如粒子探测与信号甄别。
神经网络在高能物理中表现强大,但训练过程不透明,如同黑箱。传统切片流方法虽简洁可解释,却需大量手动调参确定最优切片边界。为此,我们提出可学习切片流(LCF),将传统切片选择转化为全可微、数据驱动的过程。LCF采用并行与串行两种切片策略,灵活确定最优边界;引入可学习重要性机制,量化特征贡献并动态调整损失,提供模型驱动的洞察,优于人为设定的指标。为保证可微性,采用改进损失函数,以掩码操作替代硬切片,保持数据结构完整。LCF在六个模拟数据集和一个真实的双玻色子对胶子喷注(diboson vs. QCD)数据集上测试,结果表明:1)能准确学习典型特征分布下的切片边界;2)对区分性强、重叠少的特征赋予更高重要性;3)对冗余或相关特征具有鲁棒性;4)在真实场景中表现良好。在双玻色子数据集中,使用全部可观测量时,初始性能略低于提升决策树和多层感知机,但整体显著提升可解释性与可控性。源代码与实验数据见 https://github.com/Star9daisy/learnable-cut-flow。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Neural networks have emerged as a powerful paradigm for tasks in high energy physics, yet their opaque training process renders them as a black box. In contrast, the traditional cut flow method offers simplicity and interpretability but requires extensive manual tuning to identify optimal cut boundaries. To merge the strengths of both approaches, we propose the Learnable Cut Flow (LCF), a neural network that transforms the traditional cut selection into a fully differentiable, data-driven process. LCF implements two cut strategies-parallel, where observable distributions are treated independently, and sequential, where prior cuts shape subsequent ones-to flexibly determine optimal boundaries. Building on this strategy, we introduce the Learnable Importance, a metric that quantifies feature importance and adjusts their contributions to the loss accordingly, offering model-driven insights unlike ad-hoc metrics. To ensure differentiability, a modified loss function replaces hard cuts with mask operations, preserving data shape throughout the training process. LCF is tested on six varied mock datasets and a realistic diboson vs. QCD dataset. Results demonstrate that LCF 1. accurately learns cut boundaries across typical feature distributions in both parallel and sequential strategies, 2. assigns higher importance to discriminative features with minimal overlap, 3. handles redundant or correlated features robustly, and 4. performs effectively in real-world scenarios. In the diboson dataset, LCF initially underperforms boosted decision trees and multiplayer perceptrons when using all observables. LCF bridges the gap between traditional cut flow method and modern black-box neural networks, delivering actionable insights into the training process and feature importance. Source code and experimental data are available at https://github.com/Star9daisy/learnable-cut-flow.
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