2024/07/03 by Aehle, Max, Nguyen, Xuan Tung, Novák, Mihály +5
#Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.02966
We have applied an operator-overloading forward-mode algorithmic differentiation tool to the Monte-Carlo particle simulation toolkit Geant4. Our differentiated version of Geant4 allows computing mean pathwise derivatives of user-defined outputs of Geant4 applications with respect to user-defined inputs. This constitutes a major step towards enabling gradient-based optimization techniques in high-energy physics, as well as other application domains of Geant4. This is a preliminary report on the technical aspects of applying operator-overloading AD to Geant4, as well as a first analysis of some results obtained by our differentiated Geant4 prototype. We plan to follow up with a more refined analysis.