Empirical fits to inclusive electron-carbon scattering data obtained by deep-learning methods
This work provides incremental improvements in model-independent parametrizations for nuclear physics data analysis, benefiting researchers in that field.
The researchers tackled the problem of fitting electron-carbon scattering cross sections across a broad kinematic range using deep learning, achieving fits with uncertainties around 7% that agree with experimental data and theoretical predictions. They compared bootstrap and Monte Carlo dropout methods, finding the bootstrap approach better for interpolation and extrapolation.
Employing the neural network framework, we obtain empirical fits to the electron-scattering cross sections for carbon over a broad kinematic region, extending from the quasielastic peak through resonance excitation to the onset of deep-inelastic scattering. We consider two different methods of obtaining such model-independent parametrizations and the corresponding uncertainties: based on the bootstrap approach and the Monte Carlo dropout approach. In our analysis, the $χ^2$ defines the loss function, including point-to-point and normalization uncertainties for each independent set of measurements. Our statistical approaches lead to fits of comparable quality and similar uncertainties of the order of $7$%. To test these models, we compare their predictions to test datasets excluded from the training process and theoretical predictions obtained within the spectral function approach. The predictions of both models agree with experimental measurements and theoretical calculations. We also perform a comparison to a dataset lying beyond the covered kinematic region, and find that the bootstrap approach shows better interpolation and extrapolation abilities than the one based on the dropout algorithm.