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Branches of a Tree: Taking Derivatives of Programs with Discrete and Branching Randomness in High Energy Physics

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arxiv 2308.16680 v1 pith:ZECWWXFP submitted 2023-08-31 stat.ML cs.LGhep-exhep-phphysics.data-an

Branches of a Tree: Taking Derivatives of Programs with Discrete and Branching Randomness in High Energy Physics

classification stat.ML cs.LGhep-exhep-phphysics.data-an
keywords programsbranchingenergygradienthighoptimizationphysicsanalysis
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We propose to apply several gradient estimation techniques to enable the differentiation of programs with discrete randomness in High Energy Physics. Such programs are common in High Energy Physics due to the presence of branching processes and clustering-based analysis. Thus differentiating such programs can open the way for gradient based optimization in the context of detector design optimization, simulator tuning, or data analysis and reconstruction optimization. We discuss several possible gradient estimation strategies, including the recent Stochastic AD method, and compare them in simplified detector design experiments. In doing so we develop, to the best of our knowledge, the first fully differentiable branching program.

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Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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