Collider event distances from the phase space sphere

Abstract

Can the distribution of collider events in phase space be used to distinguish the processes that produced them? We present a distance-based classification method that uses the global topology of Lorentz-invariant phase space and retains reconstructed masses. To tackle particularly challenging classification tasks that may benefit from higher event resolution, we develop a polynomial-time approximation to compute the distances. The resulting classifiers achieve strong discrimination across several simulated benchmarks, including fully hadronic four-top production against $t\bar{t}+\text{jets}$.

arXiv comment26 pages + appendices, 10 figures