BINARY JUNIPR: An Interpretable Probabilistic Model for Discrimination

JUNIPR is an approach to unsupervised learning in particle physics that scaffolds a probabilistic model for jets around their representation as binary trees. Separate JUNIPR models can be learned for different event or jet types, then compared and explored for physical insight. The relative probabilities can also be used for discrimination. In this Letter, we show how the training of the separate models can be refined in the context of classification to optimize discrimination power. We refer to this refined approach as BINARY JUNIPR. BINARY JUNIPR achieves state-of-the-art performance for quark-gluon discrimination and top tagging. The trained models can then be analyzed to provide physical insight into how the classification is achieved. As examples, we explore differences between quark and gluon jets and between gluon jets generated with two different simulations.