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arXiv:1908.04475 · Quantum Machine Intelligence

Charged particle tracking with quantum annealing optimization

Alexander Zlokapa, Abhishek Anand, Jean-Roch Vlimant, Javier Mauricio Duarte, Joshua Job, Daniel A. Lidar, M. Spiropulu

Published Nov 2, 2021• 40 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract At the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), traditional track reconstruction techniques that are critical for physics analysis will need to be upgraded to scale with track density. Quantum annealing has shown promise in its ability to solve combinatorial optimization problems amidst an ongoing effort to establish evidence of a quantum speedup. As a step towards exploiting such potential speedup, we investigate a track reconstruction approach by adapting the existing geometric Denby-Peterson (Hopfield) network method to the quantum annealing framework for HL-LHC conditions. We develop additional techniques to embed the problem onto existing and near-term quantum annealing hardware. Results using simulated annealing and quantum annealing with the D-Wave 2X system on the TrackML open dataset are presented, demonstrating the successful application of a quantum annealing algorithm to the track reconstruction challenge. We find that combinatorial optimization problems can effectively reconstruct tracks, suggesting possible applications for fast hardware-specific implementations at the HL-LHC while leaving open the possibility of a quantum speedup for tracking.

DOI
10.1007/s42484-021-00054-w

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Abstract At the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), traditional track reconstruction techniques that are critical for physics analysis will need to be upgraded to scale with track density. Quantum annealing has shown promise in its ability to solve combinatorial optimization problems amidst an ongoing effort to establish evidence of a quantum speedup. As a step towards exploiting such potential speedup, we investigate a track reconstruction approach by adapting the existing geometric Denby-Peterson (Hopfield) network method to the quantum annealing framework for HL-LHC conditions. We develop additional techniques to embed the problem onto existing and near-term quantum annealing hardware. Results using simulated annealing and quantum annealing with the D-Wave 2X system on the TrackML open dataset are presented, demonstrating the successful application of a quantum annealing algorithm to the track reconstruction challenge. We find that combinatorial optimization problems can effectively reconstruct tracks, suggesting possible applications for fast hardware-specific implementations at the HL-LHC while leaving open the possibility of a quantum speedup for tracking.
Accurate determination of particle track reconstruction parameters will be a major challenge for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) experiments. The expected increase in the number of simultaneous collisions at the HL-LHC and the resulting high detector occupancy will make track reconstruction algorithms extremely demanding in terms of time and computing resources. The increase in number of hits will increase the complexity of track reconstruction algorithms. In addition, the ambiguity in assigning hits to particle tracks will be increased due to the finite resolution of the detector and the physical “closeness” of the hits. Thus, the reconstruction of charged particle tracks will be a major challenge to the correct interpretation of the HL-LHC data. Most methods currently in use are based on Kalman filters which are shown to be robust and to provide good physics performance. However, they are expected to scale worse than quadratically. Designing an algorithm capable of reducing the combinatorial background at the hit level, would provide a much “cleaner” initial seed to the Kalman filter, strongly reducing the total processing time. One of the salient features of Quantum Computers is the ability to evaluate a very large number of states simultaneously, making them an ideal instrument for searches in a large parameter space. In fact, different R&D initiatives are exploring how Quantum Tracking Algorithms could leverage such capabilities. In this paper, we present our work on the implementation of a quantum-based track finding algorithm aimed at reducing combinatorial background during the initial seeding stage. We use the publicly available dataset designed for the kaggle TrackML challenge.
The unprecedented increase of complexity and scale of data is expected in the necessary computation for tracking detectors of the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) experiments. While currently used Kalman filter based algorithms are reaching their limits in terms of ambiguities from increasing number of simultaneous collisions, occupancy, and scalability (worse than quadratic), a variety of machine learning approaches to particle track reconstruction are explored. It has been demonstrated previously by HEP.TrkX using TrackML datasets, that graph neural networks, processing events as a graph connecting track measurements, are a promising solution and can reduce the combinatorial background to a manageable amount and are scaling to a computationally reasonable size. In previous work, we have shown a first attempt of Quantum Computing to Graph Neural Networks for track reconstruction of particles. We aim to leverage the capability of quantum computing to evaluate a very large number of states simultaneously and thus to effectively search in a large parameter space. As the next step in this paper, we present an improved model with an iterative approach to overcome the low accuracy convergence of the initial oversimplified Tree Tensor Network (TTN) model.
Abstract Charged particle reconstruction or track reconstruction is one of the most crucial components of pattern recognition in high-energy collider physics. It is known to entail enormous consumption of computing resources, especially when the particle multiplicity is high, which will be the conditions at future colliders, such as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider and Super Proton–Proton Collider. Track reconstruction can be formulated as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, for which various quantum algorithms have been investigated and evaluated with both a quantum simulator and hardware. Simulated bifurcation algorithms are a set of quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms, known to be serious competitors to other Ising machines. In this study, we show that simulated bifurcation algorithms can be employed to solve the particle tracking problem. The simulated bifurcation algorithms run on classical computers and are suitable for parallel processing and usage of graphical processing units, and they can handle significantly large amounts of data at high speed. These algorithms exhibit reconstruction efficiency and purity comparable to or sometimes improved over those of simulated annealing, but the running time can be reduced by as much as four orders of magnitude. These results suggest that QUBO models together with quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms are valuable for current and future particle tracking problems.
The High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) starts from 2027 to extend the physics discovery potential at the energy frontier. The HL-LHC produces experimental data with a much higher luminosity, requiring a large amount of computing resources mainly due to the complexity of a track pattern recognition algorithm. Quantum annealing might be a solution for an efficient track pattern recognition in the HL-LHC environment. We demonstrated to perform the track pattern recognition by using the D-Wave annealing machine and the Fujitsu Digital Annealer. The tracking efficiency and purity for the D-Wave quantum annealer are comparable with those for a classical simulated annealing at a low pileup condition, while a drop in performance is found at a high pileup condition, corresponding to the HL-LHC pileup environment. The tracking efficiency and purity for the Fujitsu Digital Annealer are nearly the same as the classical simulated annealing.
Abstract The reconstruction of charged particles will be a key computing challenge for the high-luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) where increased data rates lead to a large increase in running time for current pattern recognition algorithms. An alternative approach explored here expresses pattern recognition as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO), which allows algorithms to be run on classical and quantum annealers. While the overall timing of the proposed approach and its scaling has still to be measured and studied, we demonstrate that, in terms of efficiency and purity, the same physics performance of the LHC tracking algorithms can be achieved. More research will be needed to achieve comparable performance in HL-LHC conditions, as increasing track density decreases the purity of the QUBO track segment classifier.
After the next planned upgrades to the LHC, the luminosity it delivers will more than double, substantially increasing the already large demand on computing resources. Therefore an efficient way to reconstruct physical objects is required. Recent studies show that one of the quantum computing techniques, quantum annealing (QA), can be used to perform particle tracking with efficiency higher than 90% in the high pileup region in the high luminosity environment. The algorithm starts by determining the connection between the hits, and classifies the topological objects with their pattern. The current study aims to improve the pre-processing efficiency in the QA-based tracking algorithm by implementing a graph neural network (GNN), which is expected to efficiently generate the topological object needed for the annealing process. Tracking performance with a different setup of the original algorithm is also studied with data collected by the ATLAS experiment.