KM3NeT front-end and readout electronics system: hardware, firmware, and software

[EN] The KM3NeT research infrastructure being built at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea will host water-Cherenkov telescopes for the detection of cosmic neutrinos. The neutrino telescopes will consist of large volume three-dimensional grids of optical modules to detect the Cherenkov light from charged particles produced by neutrino-induced interactions. Each optical module houses 31 3-in. photomultiplier tubes, instrumentation for calibration of the photomultiplier signal and positioning of the optical module, and all associated electronics boards. By design, the total electrical power consumption of an optical module has been capped at seven Watts. We present an overview of the front-end and readout electronics system inside the optical module, which has been designed for a 1-ns synchronization between the clocks of all optical modules in the grid during a life time of at least 20 years.The authors acknowledge financial support from the funding agencies: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Grant No. ANR-15-CE31-0020), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commission Europeenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (Grant Nos. ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02), Paris Ile-de-France Region, France; Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia (SRNSFG, Grant No. FR-18-1268), Georgia; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany; The General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT), Greece; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR), PRIN 2017 program (Grant NAT-NET 2017W4HA7S) Italy; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; The National Science Centre, Poland (2015/18/E/ST2/00758); National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Plan Estatal de Investigacion [refs. FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, -2-P and -3-P, (MINECO/FEDER)], Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence program (MINECO), Red Consolider MultiDark (ref. FPA2017-90566-REDC, MINECO), and Prometeo and Grisolia programs (Generalitat Valenciana), "la Caixa" Foundation (ID 100010434) through the fellowship LCF/BQ/IN17/11620019, and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 713673, Spain.Aiello, S.; Ameli, F.; Andre, M.; Androulakis, G.; Anghinolfi, M.; Anton, G.; Ardid Ramírez, M.... (2019). KM3NeT front-end and readout electronics system: hardware, firmware, and software. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems. 5(4):1-15. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.5.4.046001S1155

Architecture and performance of the KM3NeT front-end firmware

The KM3NeT infrastructure consists of two deep-sea neutrino telescopes being deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. The telescopes will detect extraterrestrial and atmospheric neutrinos by means of the incident photons induced by the passage of relativistic charged particles through the seawater as a consequence of a neutrino interaction. The telescopes are configured in a three-dimensional grid of digital optical modules, each hosting 31 photomultipliers. The photomultiplier signals produced by the incident Cherenkov photons are converted into digital information consisting of the integrated pulse duration and the time at which it surpasses a chosen threshold. The digitization is done by means of time to digital converters (TDCs) embedded in the field programmable gate array of the central logic board. Subsequently, a state machine formats the acquired data for its transmission to shore. We present the architecture and performance of the front-end firmware consisting of the TDCs and the state machine

Sensitivity of the KM3NeT detector to neutrino fluxes from Galactic point-like sources

The KM3NeT collaboration has started the implementation of the first phase of a cubic-kilometre-scale neutrino telescope in the Northern hemisphere with an integrated platform for Earth and deep sea sciences. The location in the Mediterranean Sea will allow for surveying a large part of the sky, including most of the Galactic Plane and the Galactic Centre, thus complementing the sky coverage of IceCube at the South Pole. Amongst the potential Galactic neutrino sources, SuperNova Remnants are particularly promising since their measured gamma-ray emission extends to several tenths of TeV and exhibits indications for hadronic processes. Assuming a hadronic origin of the gamma-ray emission, the models for neutrino emission from SuperNova Remnants and also from other source types such as pulsars are robustly constrained by gamma-ray measurements. We report expected KM3NeT sensitivities for neutrino fluxes from RXJ1713.7-3946 and Vela X. The sensitivity to point-like sources with a E-2 power law energy spectrum is also reported and compared to the other existing detectors

Progress in End-to-End Optimization of Detectors for Fundamental Physics with Differentiable Programming

In this article we examine recent developments in the research area concerning the creation of end-to-end models for the complete optimization of measuring instruments. The models we consider rely on differentiable programming methods and on the specification of a software pipeline including all factors impacting performance -- from the data-generating processes to their reconstruction and the extraction of inference on the parameters of interest of a measuring instrument -- along with the careful specification of a utility function well aligned with the end goals of the experiment. Building on previous studies originated within the MODE Collaboration, we focus specifically on applications involving instruments for particle physics experimentation, as well as industrial and medical applications that share the detection of radiation as their data-generating mechanism

Progress in End-to-End Optimization of Detectors for Fundamental Physics with Differentiable Programming

International audienceIn this article we examine recent developments in the research area concerning the creation of end-to-end models for the complete optimization of measuring instruments. The models we consider rely on differentiable programming methods and on the specification of a software pipeline including all factors impacting performance -- from the data-generating processes to their reconstruction and the extraction of inference on the parameters of interest of a measuring instrument -- along with the careful specification of a utility function well aligned with the end goals of the experiment. Building on previous studies originated within the MODE Collaboration, we focus specifically on applications involving instruments for particle physics experimentation, as well as industrial and medical applications that share the detection of radiation as their data-generating mechanism

Progress in End-to-End Optimization of Detectors for Fundamental Physics with Differentiable Programming

International audienceIn this article we examine recent developments in the research area concerning the creation of end-to-end models for the complete optimization of measuring instruments. The models we consider rely on differentiable programming methods and on the specification of a software pipeline including all factors impacting performance -- from the data-generating processes to their reconstruction and the extraction of inference on the parameters of interest of a measuring instrument -- along with the careful specification of a utility function well aligned with the end goals of the experiment. Building on previous studies originated within the MODE Collaboration, we focus specifically on applications involving instruments for particle physics experimentation, as well as industrial and medical applications that share the detection of radiation as their data-generating mechanism

Progress in End-to-End Optimization of Detectors for Fundamental Physics with Differentiable Programming

In this article we examine recent developments in the research area concerning the creation of end-to-end models for the complete optimization of measuring instruments. The models we consider rely on differentiable programming methods and on the specification of a software pipeline including all factors impacting performance -- from the data-generating processes to their reconstruction and the extraction of inference on the parameters of interest of a measuring instrument -- along with the careful specification of a utility function well aligned with the end goals of the experiment. Building on previous studies originated within the MODE Collaboration, we focus specifically on applications involving instruments for particle physics experimentation, as well as industrial and medical applications that share the detection of radiation as their data-generating mechanism

Exploiting Differentiable Programming for the End-to-end Optimization of Detectors

International audienceThe coming of age of differentiable programming makes possible today to create completecomputer models of experimental apparatus that include the stochastic data-generation processes, the full modeling of the reconstruction and inference procedures, and a suitably definedobjective function, along with the cost of any given detector configuration, geometry and materials. This enables the end-to-end optimization of the instruments, by using techniques developedwithin computer science that are currently vastly exploited in fields such as fluid dynamics.The MODE Collaboration has started to consider the problem in its generality, to providesoftware architectures that may be useful for the optimization of experimental design. Thesemodels may be useful in a ”human in the middle” system as they provide information on therelative merit of different configurations as a continuous function of the design choices. In thisshort contribution we summarize the plan of studies that has been laid out, and its potential inthe long term for the future of experimental studies in fundamental physics