Estimating elliptic flow coefficient in heavy ion collisions using deep learning

Abstract

Machine learning techniques have been employed for the high energy physics community since the early 80s to deal with a broad spectrum of problems. This work explores the prospects of using deep learning techniques to estimate elliptic flow (v2) in heavy-ion collisions at the RHIC and LHC energies. A novel method is developed to process the input observables from particle kinematic information. The proposed deep neural network (DNN) model is trained with Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 TeV minimum bias events simulated with a multiphase transport model. The predictions from the machine learning technique are compared to both simulation and experiment. The deep learning model seems to preserve the centrality and energy dependence of v2 for the LHC and RHIC energies. The DNN model is also quite successful in predicting the pT dependence of v2. When subjected to event simulation with additional noise, the proposed DNN model still keeps the robustness and prediction accuracy intact up to a reasonable extent. © 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.