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:2608. 13652v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generic event-level anomaly detection for collider physics has two recurring problems: anomaly scores are hard to interpret, and they correlate strongly with energy scale and object multiplicity.
By Haoyi Jia, Sagar Addepalli, Julia Gonski
arXiv:2606. 27411v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study a quantum autoencoder (QAE) for compression-driven anomaly detection in brain MRI data.
By Santanu Ganguly, Xing Liang, Dimitrios Makris
The paper introduces a Physics-informed Predictive Prior Tensor Autoencoder (PPPTAE) for anomaly detection in multi-dimensional time series. It combines reconstruction-based and prediction-based autoencoders by embedding a Bayesian fusion approach and a predictive prior that respects tensor correlations. The method incorporates physical laws via tensor low‑rank decomposition to prevent over‑generalization and is validated on real‑world datasets.
By Jianan Liu, Chunguang Li
The paper studies a class of tabular anomaly detectors that train a neural map toward a fixed target using squared‑error loss, noting that improved optimization can paradoxically worsen detection performance—a phenomenon termed convergence collapse. It demonstrates that this collapse arises because the learned map extrapolates beyond the training data, erasing residual signals on anomalies. To address this, the authors introduce Kernel Contraction Matching (KCM), a closed‑form, training‑free kernel‑based baseline, and propose the Kernel‑Anchored Regularizer (KAR), which penalizes deviations from a kernel‑weighted average of training targets, thereby mitigating collapse and improving AUROC during extended training.
By Jos\'e Lucas De Melo Costa, Fabrice Popineau, Arpad Rimmel, Bich-Li\^en Doan
While recent advancements in anomaly detection have demonstrated the efficacy of CNN- and Transformer-based approaches, these architectures face inherent limitations: CNNs struggle to capture long-range dependencies, whereas Transformers suffer from quadratic computational complexity. Consequently, Mamba-based architectures have attracted considerable attention, as they successfully combine superior long-range dependency modeling with linear computational complexity.