Full Phase Space Resonant Anomaly Detection

Abstract

Physics beyond the Standard Model that is resonant in one or more dimensions has been a longstanding focus of countless searches at colliders and beyond. Recently, many new strategies for resonant anomaly detection have been developed, where sideband information can be used in conjunction with modern machine learning, in order to generate synthetic datasets representing the Standard Model background. Until now, this approach was only able to accommodate a relatively small number of dimensions, limiting the breadth of the search sensitivity. Using recent innovations in point cloud generative models, we show that this strategy can also be applied to the full phase space, using all relevant particles for the anomaly detection. As a proof of principle, we show that the signal from the R\\&D dataset from the LHC Olympics is findable with this method, opening up the door to future studies that explore the interplay between depth and breadth in the representation of the data for anomaly detection.

Erik Buhmann et al., Full Phase Space Resonant Anomaly Detection, arXiv