Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) produce high-dimensional, sparsely populated datasets that encode detailed three-dimensional particle tracks. This project develops machine learning methods that learn structured representations directly from raw detector signals, enabling scalable analysis and discovery in nuclear physics experiments.
We focus on sparse convolutional neural networks that operate directly on TPC data represented as sparse tensors. Using Minkowski Engine architectures, we investigate how latent embeddings learned from detector signals capture physically meaningful event structure and transfer across different TPC systems, demonstrating a pathway toward foundation models for TPCs.
This effort builds on earlier work developing a multi-modal deep learning framework for the GADGET II TPC at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), where convolutional neural network object detection was combined with time-projection signal analysis to identify rare proton–alpha coincidence events relevant to nuclear astrophysics measurements.
Tyler Wheeler by the GADGET II TPC detector at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB).
References
Tyler Wheeler, M. Kuchera, R. Ramanujan, R. Krupp, C. Wrede, S. Ravishankar, D. Bazin, C. Cross, H. Heung, A. Jones, P. Singh, B. Votaw. "Cross-detector Representation Learning with Applications to TPC Foundation Models." In preparation (2026).
Tyler Wheeler, M. Kuchera, R. Ramanujan, R. Krupp, C. Wrede, S. Ravishankar, C. Cross, H. Heung, A. Jones, B. Votaw. "Sparse Methods for Vector Embeddings of TPC Data." NeurIPS Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop 2025. arXiv:2511.11221 (2025).
Tyler Wheeler, S. Ravishankar, C. Wrede, A. Andalib, A. Anthony, Y. Ayyad, B. Jain, A. Jaros, R. Mahajan, L. Schaedig, A. Adams, S. Ahn, J.M. Allmond, D. Bardayan, D. Bazin, K. Bosmpotinis, T. Budner, S.R. Carmichael, S.M. Cha, A. Chen, K.A. Chipps, J.M. Christie, I. Cox, J. Dopfer, M. Friedman, J. Garcia-Duarte, E. Good, T.J. Gray, A. Green, R. Grzywacz, K. Hahn, R. Jain, E. Jensen, T. King, S. Liddick, B. Longfellow, R. Lubna, C. Marshall, Y. Mishnayot, A.J. Mitchell, F. Montes, T.H. Ogunbeku, J. Owens-Fryar, S.D. Pain, J. Pereira, E. Pollacco, A.M. Rogers, M.Z. Serikow, K. Setoodehnia, L.J. Sun, J. Surbrook, A. Tsantiri, L.E. Weghorn. "Object Detection with Deep Learning for Rare Event Search in the GADGET II TPC." Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A 1080, 170659 (2025).