CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and Mistral, a French-based AI laboratory, have entered into a strategic partnership to advance artificial intelligence in the field of fundamental science. The collaboration aims to combine CERN’s vast repository of experimental data and high-energy physics expertise with Mistral’s experience in training large-scale AI models. While the initial focus of the partnership is on high-energy physics, the organizations intend for the resulting AI capabilities to be shared with the broader scientific community.
The image illustrates the strategic partnership between the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and the French AI laboratory Mistral.
The primary objective of this initiative is the creation of a 'Large Physics Model,' which would serve as the first foundation model specifically for collider physics. Unlike traditional machine learning applications that solve narrow, specialized tasks, a foundation model is designed to learn across an entire reconstruction chain. Currently, analyzing collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) requires a sequence of specialized algorithms to transform raw detector signals into identifiable particles. The proposed model aims to handle multiple tasks within a single framework, including reconstructing collisions, identifying specific particles, flagging unexpected signals, and evaluating future detector designs.
To train this model, the partners will leverage CERN’s massive data infrastructure, which currently houses approximately one exabyte (one million terabytes) of experimental data. This scale is expected to increase significantly with the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project, which is slated to begin operations around 2030 and is expected to increase the number of collisions tenfold. By utilizing this high-volume, high-precision data, the partnership seeks to address the growing complexity of modern particle physics, providing a scalable toolset for researchers to push the frontiers of scientific discovery.