Physics-informed continuous normalizing flows to learn the electric field within a time-projection chamber

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Li, Ivy, Gaemers, Peter, Qin, Juehang, Bruckner, Naija, Arthurs, Maris, Monzani, Maria Elena, Tunnell, Christopher
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912686595375104
author Li, Ivy
Gaemers, Peter
Qin, Juehang
Bruckner, Naija
Arthurs, Maris
Monzani, Maria Elena
Tunnell, Christopher
author_facet Li, Ivy
Gaemers, Peter
Qin, Juehang
Bruckner, Naija
Arthurs, Maris
Monzani, Maria Elena
Tunnell, Christopher
contents Accurate position reconstruction in noble-element time-projection chambers (TPCs) is critical for rare-event searches in astroparticle physics, yet is systematically limited by electric field distortions arising from charge accumulation on detector surfaces. Conventional data-driven field corrections suffer from three fundamental limitations: discretization artifacts that break smoothness and differentiability, lack of guaranteed consistency with Maxwell's equations, and statistical requirements of $\mathcal{O}(10^7)$ calibration events. We introduce a physics-informed continuous normalizing flow architecture that learns the electric field transformation directly from calibration data while enforcing the constraint of field conservativity through the model structure itself. Applied to simulated $^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr calibration data in an XLZD-like dual-phase xenon TPC, our method achieves superior reconstruction accuracy compared to histogram-based corrections when trained on identical datasets, demonstrating viable performance with only $6\times10^5$ events$\unicode{x2013}$an order of magnitude reduction in calibration requirements. This approach enables practical monthly field monitoring campaigns, propagation of position uncertainties through differentiable transformations, and enhanced background discrimination in next-generation rare-event searches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_01897
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Physics-informed continuous normalizing flows to learn the electric field within a time-projection chamber
Li, Ivy
Gaemers, Peter
Qin, Juehang
Bruckner, Naija
Arthurs, Maris
Monzani, Maria Elena
Tunnell, Christopher
Instrumentation and Detectors
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Accurate position reconstruction in noble-element time-projection chambers (TPCs) is critical for rare-event searches in astroparticle physics, yet is systematically limited by electric field distortions arising from charge accumulation on detector surfaces. Conventional data-driven field corrections suffer from three fundamental limitations: discretization artifacts that break smoothness and differentiability, lack of guaranteed consistency with Maxwell's equations, and statistical requirements of $\mathcal{O}(10^7)$ calibration events. We introduce a physics-informed continuous normalizing flow architecture that learns the electric field transformation directly from calibration data while enforcing the constraint of field conservativity through the model structure itself. Applied to simulated $^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr calibration data in an XLZD-like dual-phase xenon TPC, our method achieves superior reconstruction accuracy compared to histogram-based corrections when trained on identical datasets, demonstrating viable performance with only $6\times10^5$ events$\unicode{x2013}$an order of magnitude reduction in calibration requirements. This approach enables practical monthly field monitoring campaigns, propagation of position uncertainties through differentiable transformations, and enhanced background discrimination in next-generation rare-event searches.
title Physics-informed continuous normalizing flows to learn the electric field within a time-projection chamber
topic Instrumentation and Detectors
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01897