Machine Learning enabled searches for new Physics in Astrophysical data
IFPU
April 3 – 7, 2023
Over the past fifteen years, experiments exploring the high-energy sky with gamma rays and charged cosmic rays gathered unprecedented data on the most energetic astrophysical processes in our Galaxy. These measurements resulted in a series of exciting discoveries in the field of high-energy astrophysics and provided an opportunity to search for the nature of Dark Matter (DM) particles in a completely new way. Other data streams are providing rich opportunities for new physics searches: neutrino telescopes such as IceCube, ATLAS/CMS at the Large Hadron Collider, underground dark matter detectors and gravitational waves detection facilities (LIGO/Virgo). At the same time, machine-learning (ML) methods are being increasingly used to tackle the analyses of large and complex data sets. There is now a historic opportunity to develop new methods to extract information and address scientific questions from a combination of data streams thanks to machine learning, potentially bringing about new breakthroughs in the field.
Inspired by the arguments listed above, this IFPU focus week program gathers scientists across the physics and machine learning communities to revolutionize the analysis of astrophysical, astroparticle and particle physics data by adopting and developing new ML techniques, with the overarching aim to discern signals of new physics. In particular, our week-long event is structured around thematic days: each day is dedicated to a prominent ML technique, which will be discussed in the context of the science challenges that astrophysical and astroparticle data bring in relation to it.
Reference webpage: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1227162/.
Scientific organizers:
- Sascha Caron (NIKEF)
- Roberto Ruiz (University of Valencia)
- Roberto Trotta (SISSA)
- Gabrijela Zaharijas (University of Nova Gorica)
Other participants (to be completed soon):
- Elena Cuoco (Data Science Office at European Gravitational Observatory and Scuola Normale Superiore)
- Giulia Despali (Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Heidelberg)
- Shirley Ho (Flatiron Institute)
- Christoph Weniger (GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam)
- Sebastian Wagner-Carena (Stanford University)