An optical-lensing inspired data thinning method for nuclear cross section data

In the study of nuclear cross sections, the computational demands of data assimilation methods can become prohibitive when dealing with large data sets. We have developed a novel variant of the data thinning algorithm, inspired by the principles of optical lensing, which effectively reduces data volume while preserving critical information. We show how it improves fitting through a toy problem and for several examples of total cross sections for neutron-induced reactions on rare-earth isotopes. We demonstrate how this method can be applied as an efficient pre-processing step prior to smoothing, significantly improving computational efficiency without compromising the quality of uncertainty quantification.