Accelerating template generation in resonant anomaly detection searches with optimal transport
We introduce Resonant Anomaly Detection with Optimal Transport (RAD-OT), a method for generating signal templates in resonant anomaly detection searches. RAD-OT leverages the fact that the samples from the conditional probability density of the target features vary approximately linearly along the optimal transport path connecting the resonant feature. This does not assume that the conditional density itself is linear with the resonant feature, allowing RAD-OT to efficiently capture multimodal relationships, changes in resolution, etc. By solving the optimal transport problem, RAD-OT can quickly build a template by interpolating between the background distributions in two sideband regions. We demonstrate the performancemore »