arXiv Machine Learning

Model-Agnostic Search for New Physics in the Presence of Imperfect Background by Smearing the Data

The paper introduces MASSIB, a model‑agnostic search technique for new physics that learns a density ratio between data and a misspecified background distribution. By smearing the density ratio, the method defines a signal region with high signal concentration while mitigating bias in background estimation. Applied to simulated LHC events with realistic background mismodeling, MASSIB consistently identifies data‑driven signal regions and maintains strong statistical power without relying on strong assumptions about signal or background.

arXiv AI
Oct 12

Local Diagnostics of Learned Event Representations for Anomaly Detection at the HL-LHC

The paper investigates anomaly detection in high-energy physics by learning low-dimensional representations of collision events. Using supervised and self-supervised neural embeddings on a large simulated dataset, the authors find that supervised objectives generally outperform self-supervised ones and improve signal efficiency compared to traditional kinematic-feature autoencoders. They also propose a local diagnostic pipeline that models the Standard Model latent space with a Gaussian Mixture Model, profiles components via high-level observables, and ranks these observables by their local discriminating power, thereby linking anomaly scores to specific kinematic features.

By Donatella Genovese, Philip Ploner, Simone Scardapane, Stefano Giagu, Thea Klaeboe Aarrestad
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Likelihood-Based Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in CMS Dijet Events

arXiv:2609.06686v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present an unsupervised search for anomalous dijet events in proton--proton collision data using neural spline flow density estimation. A normaliz...

By Bhavishya Chebrolu (VIT-AP University, Amaravati, India), Hitesh Rasineni (VIT-AP University, Amaravati, India), Prajwal Aaryan Immadi (VIT-AP University, Amaravati, India)
arXiv AI
Oct 27

How well are open sourced AI-generated image detection models out-of-the-box: A comprehensive benchmark study

The study evaluates 16 AI‑generated image detection methods in a zero‑shot setting, testing 23 pretrained variants on 12 datasets with 2.6 million images from 291 generators. Results show no single detector consistently outperforms others, with accuracy ranging from 37.5 % to 75.0 %. The study highlights that training data alignment and generator type significantly affect performance, especially against modern commercial models, and identifies systematic failure patterns across datasets.

By Simiao Ren (Neo), Yuchen Zhou (Neo), Xingyu Shen (Neo), Kidus Zewde (Neo), Tommy Duong (Neo), George Huang (Neo), Hatsanai (Neo), Tiangratanakul (Dennis), Tsang (Dennis), Ng (Dennis), En Wei, Jiayu Xue
arXiv AI
Jul 3

AI-enabled gravitational-waves searches for binary neutron stars at optimal sensitivity

arXiv:2607. 01372v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Gravitational Waves (GWs) represent the newest window of astronomy, furthering our understanding of compact objects like black holes and neutron stars in the Universe.

By Bhavya Gupta, Deep Chatterjee, William Benoit, Ethan Marx, Christina Reissel, Seiya Tsukamoto, Kyungseop Yoon, Michael W. Coughlin, Philip Harris, Erik Katsavounidis
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Mind the Gap: Navigating Inference with Optimal Transport Maps

The paper introduces a model calibration method using optimal transport to address discrepancies between simulation and experimental data in high-dimensional machine learning applications. Applied to jet tagging in particle physics, the technique calibrates a 128‑dimensional latent representation from a general‑purpose classifier, ensuring downstream derived quantities are properly calibrated. This enables more reliable use of foundation models for jet flavor analysis in LHC experiments and offers a general framework for correcting high‑dimensional simulations across scientific fields.

By Malte Algren, Tobias Golling, Francesco Armando Di Bello, Christopher Pollard
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 18

Generative Verification: Rethinking the Uncertainty Signal for Active Learning of Object Detection

Generative Verification introduces an active learning strategy for object detection that uses an independent generative model to re‑derive a detection’s label from the pixels inside its predicted box. The disagreement between the detector’s label and the verifier’s label serves as the acquisition signal, automatically combining localization and classification errors into a single scalar and eliminating the need for hand‑weighted terms. Experiments on PASCAL VOC and MS‑COCO show that this signal outperforms traditional uncertainty and ensemble criteria, improving mAP50 by about one point per round, especially in early rounds where confident detector errors are most common.

By Licheng Zhang, Zheng Gong