DeepXS: fast approximation of MSSM electroweak cross sections at NLO

Abstract

Abstract We present a deep learning solution to the prediction of particle production cross sections over a complicated, high-dimensional parameter space. We demonstrate the applicability by providing state-of-the-art predictions for the production of charginos and neutralinos at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the next-to-leading order in the phenomenological MSSM-19 and explicitly demonstrate the performance for $$pp\rightarrow \tilde{\chi }^+_1\tilde{\chi }^-_1,$$ pp→χ~1+χ~1-, $$\tilde{\chi }^0_2\tilde{\chi }^0_2$$ χ~20χ~20 and $$\tilde{\chi }^0_2\tilde{\chi }^\pm _1$$ χ~20χ~1± as a proof of concept which will be extended to all SUSY electroweak pairs. We obtain errors that are lower than the uncertainty from scale and parton distribution functions with mean absolute percentage errors of well below $$0.5\,\%$$ 0.5% allowing a safe inference at the next-to-leading order with inference times that improve the Monte Carlo integration procedures that have been available so far by a factor of $$\mathscr {O}(10^7)$$ O(107) from $$\mathscr {O}(\mathrm{min})$$ O(min) to $$\mathscr {O}(\mu \mathrm{s})$$ O(μs) per evaluation.