Antonin Sulc

Antonin Sulc, Raimund Kammering, Annika Eichler et al.

Navigating the landscape of particle accelerators has become increasingly challenging with recent surges in contributions. These intricate devices challenge comprehension, even within individual facilities. To address this, we introduce PACuna, a fine-tuned language model refined through publicly available accelerator resources like conferences, pre-prints, and books. We automated data collection and question generation to minimize expert involvement and make the data publicly available. PACuna demonstrates proficiency in addressing intricate accelerator questions, validated by experts. Our approach shows adapting language models to scientific domains by fine-tuning technical texts and auto-generated corpora capturing the latest developments can further produce pre-trained models to answer some intricate questions that commercially available assistants cannot and can serve as intelligent assistants for individual facilities.

Antonin Sulc, Annika Eichler, Tim Wilksen

In this paper, we show a textual analysis of past ICALEPCS and IPAC conference proceedings to gain insights into the research trends and topics discussed in the field. We use natural language processing techniques to extract meaningful information from the abstracts and papers of past conference proceedings. We extract topics to visualize and identify trends, analyze their evolution to identify emerging research directions, and highlight interesting publications based solely on their content with an analysis of their network. Additionally, we will provide an advanced search tool to better search the existing papers to prevent duplication and easier reference findings. Our analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the research landscape in the field and helps researchers and practitioners to better understand the state-of-the-art and identify areas for future research.

Antonin Sulc, Thorsten Hellert, Raimund Kammering et al.

As particle accelerators grow in complexity, traditional control methods face increasing challenges in achieving optimal performance. This paper envisions a paradigm shift: a decentralized multi-agent framework for accelerator control, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) and distributed among autonomous agents. We present a proposition of a self-improving decentralized system where intelligent agents handle high-level tasks and communication and each agent is specialized to control individual accelerator components. This approach raises some questions: What are the future applications of AI in particle accelerators? How can we implement an autonomous complex system such as a particle accelerator where agents gradually improve through experience and human feedback? What are the implications of integrating a human-in-the-loop component for labeling operational data and providing expert guidance? We show three examples, where we demonstrate the viability of such architecture.

Antonin Sulc

In this work, we study whether enforcing strict compositional structure in sequence embeddings yields meaningful geometric organization when applied to protein-protein interaction networks. Using Event2Vec, an additive sequence embedding model, we train 64-dimensional representations on random walks from the human STRING interactome, and compare against a DeepWalk baseline based on Word2Vec, trained on the same walks. We find that compositional structure substantially improves pathway coherence (30.2$\times$ vs 2.9$\times$ above random), functional analogy accuracy (mean similarity 0.966 vs 0.650), and hierarchical pathway organization, while geometric properties such as norm--degree anticorrelation are shared with or exceeded by the non-compositional baseline. These results indicate that enforced compositionality specifically benefits relational and compositional reasoning tasks in biological networks.

Thorsten Hellert, Drew Bertwistle, Simon C. Leemann et al.

We present the first language-model-driven agentic artificial intelligence (AI) system to autonomously execute multi-stage physics experiments on a production synchrotron light source. Implemented at the Advanced Light Source particle accelerator, the system translates natural language user prompts into structured execution plans that combine archive data retrieval, control-system channel resolution, automated script generation, controlled machine interaction, and analysis. In a representative machine physics task, we show that preparation time was reduced by two orders of magnitude relative to manual scripting even for a system expert, while operator-standard safety constraints were strictly upheld. Core architectural features, plan-first orchestration, bounded tool access, and dynamic capability selection, enable transparent, auditable execution with fully reproducible artifacts. These results establish a blueprint for the safe integration of agentic AI into accelerator experiments and demanding machine physics studies, as well as routine operations, with direct portability across accelerators worldwide and, more broadly, to other large-scale scientific infrastructures.

Antonin Sulc, Thorsten Hellert

The development of intelligent agents, particularly those powered by language models (LMs), has shown a critical role in various environments that require intelligent and autonomous decision-making. Environments are not passive testing grounds, and they represent the data required for agents to learn and exhibit in very challenging conditions that require adaptive, complex, and autonomous capacity to make decisions. While the paradigm of scaling models and datasets has led to remarkable emergent capabilities, we argue that scaling the structure, fidelity, and logical consistency of agent reasoning within these environments is a crucial, yet underexplored, dimension of AI research. This paper introduces a neuro-symbolic multi-agent architecture where the belief states of individual agents are formally represented as Kripke models. This foundational choice enables them to reason about known concepts of \emph{possibility} and \emph{necessity} using the formal language of modal logic. In this work, we use immutable, domain-specific knowledge to make an informed root cause diagnosis, which is encoded as logical constraints essential for proper, reliable, and explainable diagnosis. In the proposed model, we show constraints that actively guide the hypothesis generation of LMs, effectively preventing them from reaching physically or logically untenable conclusions. In a high-fidelity simulated particle accelerator environment, our system successfully diagnoses complex, cascading failures by combining the powerful semantic intuition of LMs with the rigorous, verifiable validation of modal logic and a factual world model and showcasing a viable path toward more robust, reliable, and verifiable autonomous agents.

Antonin Sulc, Thorsten Hellert, Aaron Reed et al.

This work demonstrates electronic logbook (eLog) systems leveraging modern AI-driven information retrieval capabilities at the accelerator facilities of Fermilab, Jefferson Lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. We evaluate contemporary tools and methodologies for information retrieval with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAGs), focusing on operational insights and integration with existing accelerator control systems. The study addresses challenges and proposes solutions for state-of-the-art eLog analysis through practical implementations, demonstrating applications and limitations. We present a framework for enhancing accelerator facility operations through improved information accessibility and knowledge management, which could potentially lead to more efficient operations.

Antonin Sulc, Annika Eichler, Tim Wilksen

High-power multi-beam klystrons represent a key component to amplify RF to generate the accelerating field of the superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities at European XFEL. Exchanging these high-power components takes time and effort, thus it is necessary to minimize maintenance and downtime and at the same time maximize the device's operation. In an attempt to explore the behavior of klystrons using machine learning, we completed a series of experiments on our klystrons to determine various operational modes and conduct feature extraction and dimensionality reduction to extract the most valuable information about a normal operation. To analyze recorded data we used state-of-the-art data-driven learning techniques and recognized the most promising components that might help us better understand klystron operational states and identify early on possible faults or anomalies.

Antonin Sulc, Imari Sato, Bastian Goldluecke et al.

Refraction is a common physical phenomenon and has long been researched in computer vision. Objects imaged through a refractive object appear distorted in the image as a function of the shape of the interface between the media. This hinders many computer vision applications, but can be utilized for obtaining the geometry of the refractive interface. Previous approaches for refractive surface recovery largely relied on various priors or additional information like multiple images of the analyzed surface. In contrast, we claim that a simple energy function based on Snell's law enables the reconstruction of an arbitrary refractive surface geometry using just a single image and known background texture and geometry. In the case of a single point, Snell's law has two degrees of freedom, therefore to estimate a surface depth, we need additional information. We show that solving for an entire surface at once introduces implicit parameter-free spatial regularization and yields convincing results when an intelligent initial guess is provided. We demonstrate our approach through simulations and real-world experiments, where the reconstruction shows encouraging results in the single-frame monocular setting.