3D convolutional GAN for fast simulation

Abstract

Machine Learning techniques have been used in different applications by the HEP community: in this talk, we discuss the case of detector simulation. The need for simulated events, expected in the future for LHC experiments and their High Luminosity upgrades, is increasing dramatically and requires new fast simulation solutions. We describe an R&D activity aimed at providing a configurable tool capable of training a neural network to reproduce the detector response and speed-up standard Monte Carlo simulation. This represents a generic approach in the sense that such a network could be designed and trained to simulate any kind of detector and, eventually, the whole data processing chain in order to get, directly in one step, the final reconstructed quantities, in just a small fraction of time. We present the first application of three-dimensional convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks to the simulation of high granularity electromagnetic calorimeters. We describe detailed validation studies comparing our results to Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation. Finally we show how this tool could be generalized to describe a whole class of calorimeters, opening the way to a generic machine learning based fast simulation approach.