The trigger and DAQ systems of the Na59 experiment

• Published in: 2003 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium. Conference Record (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37515) Vol. 2; pp. 1324 - 1328 Vol.2
• Main Authors: Unel, G., Birol, I., Ballestrero, S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2003
• Subjects: Birefringence; Data acquisition; Detectors; Optical retarders; Performance evaluation; Photonic crystals; Polarization; Silicon; Target tracking; Testing
• ISBN: 0780382579; 9780780382572
• ISSN: 1082-3654; 2577-0829
• DOI: 10.1109/NSSMIC.2003.1351938

NA59 experiment on the CERN SPS-H2 beamline took data during the summers of 1999 and 2000 to perform intercalibration studies of polarization measurement, and to test the use of an aligned crystal as a quarter-wave plate. The analysis revealed a proof of concept for the birefringence property of aligned crystals for photons in the 30-170 GeV energy range. The 90-meter long detector for this fixed target experiment had two independent readout schemes: one for more than 120 TDC and ADC channels to obtain tracking and energy information; and another for the readout of the silicon strip detectors to improve vertex resolution. The readout electronics of the Na59 experiment was based on VMEbus and CAMAC systems. A novel data acquisition and online monitoring software were written to work on the commodity hardware (PCs) running mainly Linux operating system.