Anomaly detection with spiking neural networks for LHC physics

Anomaly detection offers a promising strategy for discovering new physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This paper investigates AutoEncoders built using neuromorphic Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) for this purpose. One key application is at the trigger level, where anomaly detection tools could capture signals that would otherwise be discarded by conventional selection cuts. These systems must operate under strict latency and computational constraints. SNNs are inherently well-suited for low-latency, low-memory, real-time inference, particularly on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Further gains are expected with the rapid progress in dedicated neuromorphic hardware development. Using the CMS ADC2021 dataset, we design and evaluate a simple SNN AutoEncoder architecture. Our results show that the SNN AutoEncoders are competitive with conventional AutoEncoders for LHC anomaly detection across all signal models.

LIPSFUS: A neuromorphic dataset for audio-visual sensory fusion of lip reading

This paper presents a sensory fusion neuromorphic dataset collected with precise temporal synchronization using a set of Address-Event-Representation sensors and tools. The target application is the lip reading of several keywords for different machine learning applications, such as digits, robotic commands, and auxiliary rich phonetic short words. The dataset is enlarged with a spiking version of an audio-visual lip reading dataset collected with frame-based cameras. LIPSFUS is publicly available and it has been validated with a deep learning architecture for audio and visual classification. It is intended for sensory fusion architectures based on both artificial and spiking neural network algorithms.