The STRings for Absorption length in Water (STRAW) are the first in a series of pathfinders for the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), a future large-scale neutrino telescope in the ...north-eastern Pacific Ocean. STRAW consists of two
150
m
long mooring lines instrumented with optical emitters and detectors. The pathfinder is designed to measure the attenuation length of the water and perform a long-term assessment of the optical background at the future P-ONE site. After 2 years of continuous operation, measurements from STRAW show an optical attenuation length of about 28 m at
450
nm
. Additionally, the data allow a study of the ambient undersea background. The overall optical environment reported here is comparable to other deep-water neutrino telescopes and qualifies the site for the deployment of P-ONE.
The Antares computing model Kopper, Claudio
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
10/2013, Volume:
725
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Completed in 2008, Antares is now the largest water Cherenkov neutrino telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. Its main goal is to detect neutrinos from galactic and extra-galactic sources. Due to the ...high background rate of atmospheric muons and the high level of bioluminescence, several on-line and off-line filtering algorithms have to be applied to the raw data taken by the instrument. To be able to handle this data stream, a dedicated computing infrastructure has been set up.
The paper covers the main aspects of the current official Antares computing model. This includes an overview of on-line and off-line data handling and storage. In addition, the current usage of the “IceTray” software framework for Antares data processing is highlighted. Finally, an overview of the data storage formats used for high-level analysis is given.
Performance studies for the KM3NeT Neutrino Telescope Kopper, Claudio
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2012, Volume:
692
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Due to its multi-km3 size and its location in the Mediterranean Sea, the KM3NeT Neutrino Telescope has the unique ability to detect neutrinos from Galactic sources. In order to evaluate the ...performance of the current design of the detector (based on a “flexible tower” design with “multiPMT” digital optical modules), studies based on Monte-Carlo simulations have been performed. Using a dedicated reconstruction algorithm, the sensitivity to E−2 fluxes and the discovery potential for an expected neutrino spectrum from the supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3936 have been determined. The effects of a more homogenous optical module placement within the detector volume compared to the one possible with the current tower design are also presented.
Up to now, most of the simulation work for the KM3NeT neutrino telescope has been performed using software tools adapted from the ANTARES project, which have originally neither been set up for a km
...3-scale detector nor for long-term maintenance on a modern computer system. New Monte-Carlo tools, including a Geant4-based muon propagator, a photon propagation tool including a full light scattering simulation and a new optical module acceptance and readout simulator have been developed and implemented in a simulation chain using a modular software framework. An overview of the new software tools and simulation results for a possible detector configuration will be presented.
A software framework for KM3NeT Kopper, Claudio
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
04/2009, Volume:
602, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Modular software frameworks have become indispensable for large-scale experiments like the KM3NeT neutrino telescope. This article gives a generic definition of a software framework and presents an ...adaptation of
IceTray, the framework currently in use by the IceCube collaboration, for water-based detectors.
Developing sustainable software for the scientific community requires expertise in software engineering and domain science. This can be challenging due to the unique needs of scientific software, the ...insufficient resources for software engineering practices in the scientific community, and the complexity of developing for evolving scientific contexts. While open‐source software can partially address these concerns, it can introduce complicating dependencies and delay development. These issues can be reduced if scientists and software developers collaborate. We present a case study wherein scientists from the SuperNova Early Warning System collaborated with software developers from the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure for Multi‐Messenger Astrophysics project. The collaboration addressed the difficulties of open‐source software development, but presented additional risks to each team. For the scientists, there was a concern of relying on external systems and lacking control in the development process. For the developers, there was a risk in supporting a user‐group while maintaining core development. These issues were mitigated by creating a second Agile Scrum framework in parallel with the developers' ongoing Agile Scrum process. This Agile collaboration promoted communication, ensured that the scientists had an active role in development, and allowed the developers to evaluate and implement the scientists' software requirements. The collaboration provided benefits for each group: the scientists actuated their development by using an existing platform, and the developers utilized the scientists' use‐case to improve their systems. This case study suggests that scientists and software developers can avoid scientific computing issues by collaborating and that Agile Scrum methods can address emergent concerns.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic kilometer neutrino detector located at the geographic South Pole designed to detect high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. To thoroughly understand the ...detected neutrinos and their properties, the detector response to signal and background has to be modeled using Monte Carlo techniques. An integral part of these studies are the optical properties of the ice the observatory is built into. The simulated propagation of individual photons from particles produced by neutrino interactions in the ice can be greatly accelerated using graphics processing units (GPUs). In this paper, we (a collaboration between NVIDIA and IceCube) reduced the propagation time per photon by a factor of up to 3 on the same GPU. We achieved this by porting the OpenCL parts of the program to CUDA and optimizing the performance. This involved careful analysis and multiple changes to the algorithm. We also ported the code to NVIDIA OptiX to handle the collision detection. The hand-tuned CUDA algorithm turned out to be faster than OptiX. It exploits detector geometry and only a small fraction of photons ever travel close to one of the detectors.
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