Lepton Flavour Violation Identification in Tau Decay ($τ^{-} \rightarrow μ^{-}μ^{-}μ^{+}$) Using Artificial Intelligence
It addresses the challenge of detecting rare LFV processes in particle physics, which could indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, but the approach is incremental as it applies existing AI methods to this domain.
This paper tackles the problem of identifying Lepton Flavour Violation (LFV) signals in tau decay using AI algorithms on combined LHCb and simulated data, with XGBoost and a custom 10-layered neural network achieving the highest AUC of 0.88.
The discovery of neutrino oscillation, proving that neutrinos do have masses, reveals the misfits of particles in the current Standard Model (SM) theory. In theory, neutrinos having masses could result in lepton flavour not being a symmetry called Lepton Flavour Violation (LFV). While SM theory extensions allowed LFV processes, their branching fractions are too small, making them unobservable even with the strongest equipment up-to-date. With that, scientists in recent years have generated LFV-like processes from the combined LHCb and Monte-Carlo-Simulated data in an attempt to identify LFV using Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL). In this paper, the performance of several algorithms in AI has been presented, such as XGBoost, LightGBM, custom 1-D Dense Block Neural Networks (DBNNs), and custom 1-D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in identifying LFV signals, specifically $τ^{-} \rightarrow μ^{-}μ^{-}μ^{+}$ decay from the combined LHCb and Monte-Carlo-Simulated data that imitates the signatures of the said decay. Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) and Cramer-von Mises (CvM) tests were also conducted to verify the validity of predictions for each of the trained algorithms. The result shows decent performances among algorithms, except for the LightGBM, for failing the CvM test, and a 20-layered CNN for having recorded a considerably low AUC. Meanwhile, XGBoost and a 10-layered DBNN recorded the highest AUC of 0.88. The main contribution of this paper is the extensive experiment involving custom DBNN and CNN algorithms in different layers, all of which have been rarely used in the past years in identifying LFV-like signatures, unlike GBMs and tree-based algorithms, which have been more popular in the said task.