Optimization-based unfolding in high-energy physics

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Abstract In experimental High-Energy Physics, unfolding refers to the problem of estimating the underlying distribution of a physical observable from detector-level data, in the presence of statistical fluctuations and systematic uncertainties. Starting from its reformulation as a regularized quadratic optimization problem, we develop a framework to address unfolding using both classical and quantum-compatible methods. In particular, we derive a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) representation of the unfolding objective, allowing direct implementation on quantum annealing and hybrid quantum-classical solvers. The proposed approach is implemented in QUnfold, an open-source Python package integrating classical mixed-integer solvers and D-Wave's hybrid quantum solver. We benchmark the method against widely used unfolding techniques in RooUnfold, including response Matrix Inversion, Iterative Bayesian Unfolding, and Singular Value Decomposition unfolding, using synthetic datasets with controlled distortion effects. Our results demonstrate that the optimization-based approach achieves competitive reconstruction accuracy across multiple distributions while naturally accommodating regularization within the objective function. This work establishes a unified optimization perspective on unfolding and provides a practical pathway for exploring quantum-enhanced methods in experimental HEP data analysis.

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