The trigger slow control system of the Belle II experiment

TL;DR

The paper describes the development and operation of a slow control system for the Belle II trigger system, ensuring reliable data acquisition and monitoring during high-energy physics experiments at KEK.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive slow control system for the Belle II trigger, including configuration management, real-time monitoring, and alarm functionalities, enhancing operational reliability.

Findings

Successful operation during initial data-taking stage

Effective detection and handling of configuration errors

Robust monitoring and alarm system implemented

Abstract

The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider in KEK, Japan, started physics data-taking with a complete detector from early 2019 with the primary physics goal of probing new physics in heavy quark and lepton decays. An online trigger system is indispensable for the Belle II experiment to reduce the beam background events associated with high electron and positron beam currents without sacrificing the target physics-oriented events. During the Belle II operation upon beam collision, the trigger system must be consistently controlled and its status must be carefully monitored in the process of data acquisition against unexpected situations. For this purpose, we have developed a slow control system for the Belle II trigger system. Around seventy thousand configuration parameters are saved in the Belle II central database server for every run when a run starts and stops. These parameters play an essential role in offline validation of the quality of runs. Around three thousand real-time variables are stored in the Belle II main archiving server, and the trend of some of these variables are regularly used for online and offline monitoring purposes. Various operator interface tools have been prepared and used. When the configuration parameters are not correctly applied, or some of the processes are unexpectedly terminated, the slow control system detects it, stops the data-taking process, and generates an alarm. In this article, we report how we constructed the Belle II trigger slow control system, and how we successfully managed to operate during its initial stage.