Pereira Martínez, MariaCid Vidal, XabierVischia, Pietro2026-04-222026-04-222025Martinez, M. P., Vidal, X. C., & Vischia, P. (2025). Automatic Optimization of a Parallel-Plate Avalanche Counter with Optical Readout. PARTICLES, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/PARTICLES8010026https://hdl.handle.net/10347/46909An automatic optimization procedure is proposed for some operational parameters of a Parallel-Plate Avalanche Counter with Optical Readout, a detector designed for heavy-ion tracking and imaging. Exploiting differentiable programming and automatic differentiation, we model the reconstruction of the position of impinging 5.5 MeV alpha particles for different detector configurations and build an optimization cycle that minimizes an objective function. We analyze the performance improvement using this method, exploring the potential of these techniques in detector design.eng© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licenseAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Differentiable programmingMachine learningDetector optimizationNuclear physicsjournal article2026-03-2710.3390/PARTICLES80100262571-712Xopen access2571-712X