Online data acquisition and the control system for the Double Chooz experiment

Abstract

The Double Chooz experiment searches for the neutrino mixing angle θ13 using two identical detectors and reactor neutrinos. Each detector is composed of three sub-detectors, and each sub-detector has 390, 78, and approximately 3000 channels. In order to acquire pulse shapes of photomultipliers, the two kinds of Flash-ADC are used for two sub-detectors. Although the trigger rate from the physics process is not high, an event size is about 1 MB per event due to FADC readout and is not small. The data acquisition has to be controlled outside the neutrino laboratory site, because the detector is located in a nuclear power station, and access to the laboratory is restricted. For these reasons, we need deadtime free DAQs and trigger systems, with a low energy threshold, and the remote control and monitoring systems for all online processes. This paper presents the online data acquisition and the control systems for the Double Chooz experiment.