CNN with residual learning extensions in neutrino high energy physics

Abstract

As many reconstruction steps in neutrino high energy physics (HEP) are similar to image pattern recognition tasks, we explore the potential of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) combined with residual machine learning algorithm. Characteristic features from neutrino track image pixelmaps are extracted at different scales and these features are used for classification of the type of neutrino interaction. In this contribution, we sumarize observed performance of the residual neural networks (ResNet) for neutrino charged current (CC) interaction detections using image-like Monte Carlo simulated data for muon and electron neutrinos. The two topologies depicted at the neutrino detectors differ, muon neutrino CC interaction is dominated by a slowly ionizing muon, while electron neutrino CC interaction is usually recorded as a wide shower. For the ResNet performance evaluation, we use area under ROC curve (AUC) as the evaluation metric. We observe an improvement while using residual learning compared to general CNN architecture, which is caused by a more stable training with lesser vulnerability to the vanishing gradient of the ResNets. Moreover, stacking other hidden layers within our ResNet model greatly increased the AUC value on the test neutrino dataset without the signs of unstable training or overfitting.