Triggers, Data Flow and the Synchronization Between the Auger Surface Detector and the AMIGA Underground Muon Counters

Author

Szadkowski, Zbigniew

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys. & Appl. Inf., Univ. of Lodz, Lodz, Poland

Volume

58

Issue

4

fYear

2011

Firstpage

1771

Lastpage

1777

Abstract

The aim of the AMIGA project (Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array) is an investigation of Extensive Air Showers at energies lower than those accesible with the standard Auger array, where the transition from galactic to extragalactic sources is expected. The paper describes the working principle of the Master/Slave (standard Auger surface detector/the underground muon counters) synchronous data acquisition and general triggering applied in two prototypes: with 12.5 ns resolution built from 4 segments (2 FPGAs and 2 standard micro-controllers) and 3.125 ns resolution built from two segments only (2 FPGAs with implemented NIOS^® processors).

Keywords

Cherenkov counters; cosmic ray apparatus; cosmic ray muons; cosmic ray origin; cosmic ray showers; data acquisition; field programmable gate arrays; microcontrollers; nuclear electronics; scintillation counters; AMIGA project; AMIGA underground muon counters; Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array; Auger surface detector; FPGA; NIOS processors; cosmic ray extragalactic sources; cosmic ray galactic sources; detector data flow; detector synchronization; detector trigger; extensive air showers; master-slave synchronous data acquisition; microcontrollers; Detectors; Field programmable gate arrays; Mesons; Prototypes; Radiation detectors; Random access memory; Synchronization; FPGA; NIOS; Pierre Auger observatory; trigger;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2011.2142194

Filename

5771580