Data processing and storage in the Daya Bay Reactor Antineutrino Experiment

TL;DR

This paper details the data management, processing, and calibration automation in the Daya Bay Reactor Antineutrino Experiment, highlighting its data volume, transfer, and real-time analysis for neutrino research.

Contribution

It introduces the data handling infrastructure, transfer protocols, and automation processes specific to the Daya Bay neutrino experiment, which are crucial for large-scale physics data analysis.

Findings

Efficient data transfer to multiple sites with low latency

Quasi-real-time data processing for quality monitoring

Automated calibration procedures implemented

Abstract

The Daya Bay Reactor Antineutrino Experiment reported the first observation of the non-zero neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ using the first 55 days of data. It has also provided the most precise measurement of $\theta_{13}$ with the extended data to 621 days. Daya Bay will keep running for another 3 years or so. There is about 100 TB raw data produced per year, as well as several copies of reconstruction data with similar volume to the raw data for each copy. The raw data is transferred to Daya Bay onsite and two offsite clusters: IHEP in Beijing and LBNL in California, with a short latency. There is quasi-real-time data processing at both onsite and offsite clusters, for the purpose of data quality monitoring, detector calibration and preliminary data analyses. The physics data production took place a couple of times per year according to the physics analysis plan. This paper will introduce the data movement and storage, data processing and monitoring, and the automation of the calibration.