Calorimeter Shower Superresolution with Conditional Normalizing Flows: Implementation and Statistical Evaluation

arXiv stat.ML / 3/31/2026

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Key Points

  • The thesis addresses the problem of calorimeter superresolution in High Energy Physics, aiming to recover fine-grained detector information from coarser calorimeter readouts to cut compute and hardware costs without harming performance.
  • It studies whether a fast-simulation generative model from a prior work (arXiv:2308.11700) can be repurposed for superresolution by independently re-implementing and training it on the CaloChallenge 2022 dataset using Geant4 Par04 geometry.
  • Model outputs are evaluated using a rigorous statistical evaluation framework based on the methodology from arXiv:2409.16336, with the goal of quantitatively reproducing reference distributions.
  • The overall contribution is methodological: connecting conditional normalizing flows–based generative modeling with statistically grounded validation for detector-reconstruction fidelity.

Abstract

In High Energy Physics, detailed calorimeter simulations and reconstructions are essential for accurate energy measurements and particle identification, but their high granularity makes them computationally expensive. Developing data-driven techniques capable of recovering fine-grained information from coarser readouts, a task known as calorimeter superresolution, offers a promising way to reduce both computational and hardware costs while preserving detector performance. This thesis investigates whether a generative model originally designed for fast simulation can be effectively applied to calorimeter superresolution. Specifically, the model proposed in arXiv:2308.11700 is re-implemented independently and trained on the CaloChallenge 2022 dataset based on the Geant4 Par04 calorimeter geometry. Finally, the model's performance is assessed through a rigorous statistical evaluation framework, following the methodology introduced in arXiv:2409.16336, to quantitatively test its ability to reproduce the reference distributions.