30 July 2026 to 5 August 2026
Natal Convention Center
America/Sao_Paulo timezone

Machine Can Automatically Discover Parametric Functions to Model HEP Data

30 Jul 2026, 09:15
15m
Room #1 (Praiamar Natal Hotel & Convention)

Room #1

Praiamar Natal Hotel & Convention

R. Francisco Gurgel, 33 - Ponta Negra, Natal - RN, 59090-050
Talk Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Quantum Computing in HEP Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Quantum Computing in HEP

Speaker

Ho-Fung Tsoi (University of Pennsylvania)

Description

In HEP data analyses, finding an adequate function to model binned data has largely relied on a manual process: guess a functional form by intuition, fit, examine, then repeat until successful. We show that this iterative process can be automated by a machine using symbolic regression, which performs a data-driven search over function space without requiring prior knowledge of what an adequate function should look like. We present the SymbolFit package, which pairs symbolic regression with uncertainty modeling to target HEP analysis use cases, and demonstrate it on the CMS and ATLAS Run 2 dijet spectra: 560 independent seeded runs across seven simple fit configurations generated over 1000 functions fitting the spectra with $\chi^2/\text{NDF}\approx 1$, and 111 of the runs rediscovered the very dijet and UA2 functions used in published dijet searches.

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Author

Ho-Fung Tsoi (University of Pennsylvania)

Co-authors

Cecile Caillol (CERN) Dylan Sheldon Rankin (University of Pennsylvania (US)) Elliot Lipeles (University of Pennsylvania (US)) Javier Mauricio Duarte (Univ. of California San Diego (US)) Miles Cranmer (University of Cambridge) Philip Coleman Harris (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (US)) Sridhara Dasu (University of Wisconsin Madison (US))

Presentation materials