Thorsten Glüsenkamp: Transformer-encoded normalizing flows and their application to directional reconstruction in IceCube

Tuesday 29 Sept 2026, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FA31 (AlbaNova Main Building)

The directional reconstruction of IceCube neutrinos, including the estimation of uncertainties, is essential for point source searches. In recent years, per-event posterior estimation with normalizing flows has emerged as a powerful reconstruction technique for the direction. The first part of the talk will give an introduction to normalizing flows. The second part will describe recent results in their application to IceCube directional reconstruction in combination with transformers, which yields new state-of-the-art results for the angular resolution of the two main event topologies in IceCube: showers and tracks.

About the speaker: Thorsten joined the IceCube collaboration in 2009 for his diploma project in Aachen (on the detection of magnetic monopoles and trigger development). He then moved to DESY Zeuthen for a PhD searching for a diffuse neutrino flux from Blazar populations. Since 2016 he has mainly focused o statistical and machine learning based methods through three postdoctoral positions, in Erlangen, Uppsala, and Stockholm.

In the OKC: local speaker, SU-ELPA, office in the C5 corridor