It's not a FAD: first results in using Flows for unsupervised Anomaly Detection at 40 MHz at the Large Hadron Collider

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Vaselli, Francesco, Sun, Chang, Aarrestad, Thea, Danopoulos, Dimitrios, Niemi, Roope Oskari, Glowacki, Maciej Mikolaj, Govorkova, Katya, Loncar, Vladimir, Pantaleo, Felice, Pierini, Maurizio
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Vaselli, Francesco
Sun, Chang
Aarrestad, Thea
Danopoulos, Dimitrios
Niemi, Roope Oskari
Glowacki, Maciej Mikolaj
Govorkova, Katya
Loncar, Vladimir
Pantaleo, Felice
Pierini, Maurizio
author_facet Vaselli, Francesco
Sun, Chang
Aarrestad, Thea
Danopoulos, Dimitrios
Niemi, Roope Oskari
Glowacki, Maciej Mikolaj
Govorkova, Katya
Loncar, Vladimir
Pantaleo, Felice
Pierini, Maurizio
contents We present the first implementation of a Continuous Normalizing Flow (CNF) model for unsupervised anomaly detection within the realistic, high-rate environment of the Large Hadron Collider's L1 trigger systems. While CNFs typically define an anomaly score via a probabilistic likelihood, calculating this score requires solving an Ordinary Differential Equation, a procedure too complex for FPGA deployment. To overcome this, we propose a novel, hardware-friendly anomaly score defined as the squared norm of the model's vector field output. This score is based on the intuition that anomalous events require a larger transformation by the flow. Our model, trained via Flow Matching on Standard Model data, is synthesized for an FPGA using the hls4ml and da4ml libraries. We demonstrate that our approach effectively identifies a variety of beyond-the-Standard-Model signatures with performance comparable to existing machine learning-based triggers. The algorithm achieves a latency of a few hundred nanoseconds, or even less when using advanced quantization techniques, and requires minimal FPGA resources, establishing CNFs as a viable new tool for real-time, data-driven discovery at 40 MHz.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_11594
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle It's not a FAD: first results in using Flows for unsupervised Anomaly Detection at 40 MHz at the Large Hadron Collider
Vaselli, Francesco
Sun, Chang
Aarrestad, Thea
Danopoulos, Dimitrios
Niemi, Roope Oskari
Glowacki, Maciej Mikolaj
Govorkova, Katya
Loncar, Vladimir
Pantaleo, Felice
Pierini, Maurizio
High Energy Physics - Experiment
Computational Physics
We present the first implementation of a Continuous Normalizing Flow (CNF) model for unsupervised anomaly detection within the realistic, high-rate environment of the Large Hadron Collider's L1 trigger systems. While CNFs typically define an anomaly score via a probabilistic likelihood, calculating this score requires solving an Ordinary Differential Equation, a procedure too complex for FPGA deployment. To overcome this, we propose a novel, hardware-friendly anomaly score defined as the squared norm of the model's vector field output. This score is based on the intuition that anomalous events require a larger transformation by the flow. Our model, trained via Flow Matching on Standard Model data, is synthesized for an FPGA using the hls4ml and da4ml libraries. We demonstrate that our approach effectively identifies a variety of beyond-the-Standard-Model signatures with performance comparable to existing machine learning-based triggers. The algorithm achieves a latency of a few hundred nanoseconds, or even less when using advanced quantization techniques, and requires minimal FPGA resources, establishing CNFs as a viable new tool for real-time, data-driven discovery at 40 MHz.
title It's not a FAD: first results in using Flows for unsupervised Anomaly Detection at 40 MHz at the Large Hadron Collider
topic High Energy Physics - Experiment
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11594