# CaloTrilogy: Toward a Breakthrough in One-Step, End-to-End, Physics-Guided Shower Generation for Modern Calorimeters

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.04165 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04165/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 45 of its 92 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Flow matching, time series and science](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/flow-matching-time-series-and-science/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00482/) (2023)
- [Mean Flows for One-step Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13447/) (2025)
- [Cold Diffusion: Inverting Arbitrary Image Transforms Without Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09392/) (2022)
- [Improved Mean Flows: On the Challenges of Fastforward Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02012/) (2025)
- [Restart Sampling for Improving Generative Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14878/) (2023)
- [Accelerating Science with Generative Adversarial Networks: An Application to 3D Particle Showers in Multi-Layer Calorimeters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02355/) (2017)
- [Score-based Generative Models for Calorimeter Shower Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11898/) (2022)
- [CaloFlow: Fast and Accurate Generation of Calorimeter Showers with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05285/) (2021)
- [Particle Cloud Generation with Message Passing Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11535/) (2021)
- [Calorimetry with Deep Learning: Particle Simulation and Reconstruction for Collider Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06794/) (2019)
- [CaloChallenge 2022: A Community Challenge for Fast Calorimeter Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21611/) (2024)
- [CaloFlow II: Even Faster and Still Accurate Generation of Calorimeter Showers with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11377/) (2021)
- [CaloClouds: Fast Geometry-Independent Highly-Granular Calorimeter Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04847/) (2023)
- [Evaluating generative models in high energy physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10295/) (2022)
- [Deep Gaussian Mixture Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06929/) (2017)
- [GANplifying Event Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06545/) (2020)
- [CaloMan: Fast generation of calorimeter showers with density estimation on learned manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15380/) (2022)
- [PC-JeDi: Diffusion for Particle Cloud Generation in High Energy Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05376/) (2023)
- [i-flow: High-dimensional Integration and Sampling with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05486/) (2020)
- [SplitMeanFlow: Interval Splitting Consistency in Few-Step Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16884/) (2025)
- [Controlling Physical Attributes in GAN-Accelerated Simulation of Electromagnetic Calorimeters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08813/) (2017)
- [Inductive Simulation of Calorimeter Showers with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11934/) (2023)
- [CaloClouds II: Ultra-Fast Geometry-Independent Highly-Granular Calorimeter Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05704/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Lantern: Conflict-Aware Gradient Blending for Physics-Guided Diffusion Models in Calorimeter Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25060/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

High-precision calorimeter simulation at current and future colliders imposes rapidly growing computational demands, motivating the development of machine-learning surrogates for traditional Monte Carlo tools such as Geant4. Flow matching and diffusion-based generative models have become leading approaches for high-dimensional fast simulation because of their sample quality, but typically require cal O(100) function evaluations at inference and often rely on auxiliary networks to constrain global observables, compromising streamlined end-to-end generation. We introduce a unified framework that improves the balance between speed, shower quality, and physics fidelity. The method combines: (i) an average velocity field integrator that enables sampling in one or a few evaluations; (ii) a learned generative prior in shower space, constructed from data rather than random noise; and (iii) physics-guided loss terms that impose inductive biases on key observables during training. These elements are training time regularizers, preserving end-to-end inference with no additional cost. With only one or a few evaluation steps, the model achieves shower quality competitive with state-of-the-art flow and diffusion approaches, tested on several public high granularity calorimeter datasets. The results demonstrate inter-layer shower structure consistent with the underlying physics, providing a strong candidate for future fast simulation workflows.
