14–18 Sept 2026
Hörsaalzentrum University of Vienna
Europe/Vienna timezone

Virtues and Vices of Equivariant Transformers

18 Sept 2026, 10:30
20m
C2 (Hörsaalzentrum University of Vienna)

C2

Hörsaalzentrum University of Vienna

Spitalgasse 2 / Hof 2 A-1090 Vienna

Speaker

Jonas Spinner (Durham University)

Description

We study for the first time the benefit of Lorentz-equivariant transformers for large-size jet tagging and flavor tagging. To control their computing demands, we optimize their implementations for inference cost metrics. In our scaling studies, we find that Lorentz-equivariant networks outperform standard transformers provided geometric features are relevant. This holds true in an idealized world as well as for limited resources. The limited gain from Lorentz-equivariance provides interesting input to the development of foundation models for LHC data.

Authors

Huilin Qu (CERN) Jonas Spinner (Durham University) Luigi Favaro (Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL) (BE)) Tilman Plehn

Presentation materials