Diffusion model approach to simulating electron-proton scattering events

Generative artificial intelligence is a fast-growing area of research offering various avenues for exploration in high-energy nuclear physics. In this work, we explore the use of generative models for simulating electron-proton collisions relevant to experiments like the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility and the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). These experiments play a critical role in advancing our understanding of nucleons and nuclei in terms of quark and gluon degrees of freedom. The use of generative models for simulating collider events faces several challenges such as the sparsity of the data, the presence of global or eventwide constraints, and steeply falling particle distributions. In this work, we focus on the implementation of diffusion models for the simulation of electron-proton scattering events at EIC energies. Our results demonstrate that diffusion models can reproduce relevant observables such as momentum distributions and correlations of particles, momentum sum rules, and the leading electron kinematics, all of which are of particular interest in electron-proton collisions. Although the sampling process is relatively slow compared to other machine-learning architectures, we find diffusion models can generate high-quality samples. We foresee various applications of our work including inference for nuclear structure, interpretable generative machine learning, and searches of physics beyond the Standard Model.