PHENIX Level-1 Trigger systems for RHIC run-3

Abstract

The PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) will study the dynamics of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions and search for exotic states of matter, most notably the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Substantial event selectivity is needed at RHIC to enhance interesting events relative to more common ones and to satisfy the requirements of the data acquisition system. The first on-line screening is achieved by the Level-1 Trigger. The Level-1 Trigger is a beam-clock parallel-pipeline system that uses Local Level-1 (LL1) algorithms pertaining to the fastest PHENIX subdetectors, followed by a Global Level-1 (GL1) system that processes encoded LL1 reduced-bit data to issue up to 32 triggers. In this paper we discuss a new set of LL1 trigger systems that will be deployed for the third RHIC run. These new trigger systems utilize the same basic hardware designed around commercial FPGA logic in order to provide a common platform for a wide variety of physics triggers.