Cross-Domain Transfer with Particle Physics Foundation Models: From Jets to Neutrino Interactions

Future AI-based studies in particle physics will likely start from a foundation model to accelerate training and enhance sensitivity. As a step towards a general-purpose foundation model for particle physics, we investigate whether the OmniLearned foundation model pre-trained on diverse high-$Q^2$ simulated and real $pp$ and $ep$ collisions can be effectively transferred to a few-GeV fixed-target neutrino experiment. We process MINERvA neutrino--nucleus scattering events and evaluate pre-trained models on two types of tasks: regression of available energy and binary classification of charged-current pion final states ($\mathrm{CC1π^{\pm}}$, $\mathrm{CCNπ^{\pm}}$, and $\mathrm{CC1π^{0}}$). Pre-trained OmniLearned models consistently outperform similarly sized models trained from scratch, achieving better overall performance at the same compute budget, as well as achieving better performance at the same number of training steps. These results suggest that particle-level foundation models acquire inductive biases that generalize across large differences in energy scale, detector technology, and underlying physics processes, pointing toward a paradigm of detector-agnostic inference in particle physics.

End-to-end event reconstruction for precision physics at future colliders

Future collider experiments require unprecedented precision in measurements of Higgs, electroweak, and flavour observables, placing stringent demands on event reconstruction. The achievable precision on Higgs couplings scales directly with the resolution on visible final state particles and their invariant masses. Current particle flow algorithms rely on detector specific clustering, limiting flexibility during detector design. Here we present an end-to-end global event reconstruction approach that maps charged particle tracks and calorimeter and muon hits directly to particle level objects. The method combines geometric algebra transformer networks with object condensation based clustering, followed by dedicated networks for particle identification and energy regression. Our approach is benchmarked on fully simulated electron positron collisions at FCC-ee using the CLD detector concept. It outperforms the state-of-the-art rule-based algorithm by 10--20\% in relative reconstruction efficiency, achieves up to two orders of magnitude reduction in fake-particle rates for charged hadrons, and improves visible energy and invariant mass resolution by 22\%. By decoupling reconstruction performance from detector-specific tuning, this framework enables rapid iteration during the detector design phase of future collider experiments.