is the first experiment at CERN that connects a supercomputer directly to a high precision physics experiment. NA48 will study so-called
CP violation, a phenomenon that is believed to be at the origin of the observed dominance of matter over anti-matter in the universe today. The essential problem of the experiment is that a vey large number of physics events must be recorded, while the useful events are very rare and difficult to extract. High sustained data rates - up to 20 MegaBytes per second - must be handled continuously for several weeks.
Large data volumes are sent via a direct optical link over 5 kilometres from the experiment directly into the CS-2. The data must be stored using high-end tape recording and automated library technologies, while physicists at the same time need quasi real-time analysis of the data to have a fast quality feedback to control the sensitive items of the detector.
This is most of all true for the
liquid krypton calorimeter, a very high tech device that consists of 13,000 cells in which the energy of the particles is measured. The CS-2 will provide a continuous real-time calibration of the 13,000 cells, thus enabling the necessary high precision of the device.
NA48 On-Line processing on CS-2