The LVD experiment data acquisition system

Data acquisition for the LVD, a massive underground neutrino/muon detector containing 1800 tons of liquid scintillator in 1520 separate tanks and approximately 20000 (8-wire) Iarocci-type streamer chamber assemblies, is discussed. The detector is designed to look for stellar collapse neutrinos as well as for a broad range of physics experiments including searches for muon point sources, neutrino oscillations, and supersymmetric decay modes of the proton. The data acquisition challenge comes from the large physical size (49 m×12 m×13 m) and the large number of individual detectors involved. Data rates will be low enough to allow the use of CAMAC for the front-end hardware. However, peak data transfer design requirements for worst-case stellar collapse scenarios, along with the constant overhead of detector status monitoring, dictates the use of dedicated front-end processors (CES-STARBURST). The physical size of the detector system further suggests the use of a distributed data acquisition computer environment (VAXCluster). The CERN-developed MODEL online data acquisition system has been selected for the basic software architecture. The detector design and data acquisition hardware and software are described