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Work at CERN (NOMAD and NOMAD-STAR experiments)




INTRODUCTION
CERN is European Organization for Nuclear Research and it is located near the Geneva, Switzerland. I've been participating in two neutrino experiments from 1995 till 1999: NOMAD and NOMAD-STAR.


NOMAD-STAR experiment

ENVIRONMENT
13 institution, over 20 people, 8 countries.
OSF/1 DEC/alpha workstations, SunOS, Solaris, PC/Linux RedHat 4.2 & Slackware 3.2.
2 working langugages (English & French).
Duration of experiment: ~2 years, ~14 monthes data taking (day/night shifts), data analyses 2 years.
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
Installation, support and deployment of NOMAD-STAR software. Transfering, troubleshooting, debugging of NOMAD/NOMAD-STAR software on OSF/1 main cluster and RedHat farm. Client support for Linux machines (environment, library support, graphics, software management).
Web-support: An automatic update of internal NOMAD-STAR Web-site was performed during a full period of time. Update of data samples, software and access to internal data base were established.
Data management: During a whole year data were transfered between DLT robot storage farm to a local cluster. Approximately 20 Gb/day were analysed, sorted and transfered (see example of source code).
Software support: Automatic update of NOMAD-STAR software on RedHat Linux client boxes. Development and support of NOMAD-STAR software. As an example below you can see one of the modules of installation package for NOMAD-STAR experiment which was written in Tcl/Tk:

The code can be found here.
OFF-LINE SOFTWARE
As of leader of off-line software development group of NOMAD-STAR experiment I was responsible for data digitization, hit, track and vertex reconstruction. I was developing all individual parts of the off-line software. Among them:
design and implementation of track reconstruction algorithm;
data decoding and hit digitization;
track reconstruction and extrapolation;
developing of 2D Kalman filter for NOMAD-STAR;
track matching between DC and STAR;
vertex reconstruction;
event display for NOMAD-STAR;
data visualization and analysis.
The code was developed and tested under Unix operation system using C language and gcc/gdb tools, shell scripting (sh, Tcl/Tk, awk/sed). Event display was based on OnX/Motif interface and Ci interpreter (LAL software).
ON-LINE SOFTWARE
On-line software was developed for direct digitization of incoming signal from detector in readable format and on-line data analysis. The stand alone event display was also provided. My contribution included:
data decoding;
setup on-line event display using direct stream of data from working sub-detectors;
data analysis.
DATA MANAGEMENT
I was responsible for transfer, analyse, triggering and backup of NOMAD-STAR data. My responsibilities included:
automatic data transfer from central CERN storage facility (DLT robot tapes) through LAN network;
data triggering (only 0.5-1% of incoming data where usefull during a run). Out of 1,000,000 triggers only 10,000 real events where recordered and analysed;
pedestals and noise calculation were established automatically and written to another tapes;
data access for local users was performed.
PICTURE GALERY
NOMAD-STAR detector with support structure NOMAD-STAR survey NOMAD-STAR survey

NOMAD detector NOMAD-STAR detector (schematic view) NOMAD-STAR event




NOMAD EXPERIMENT

ENVIRONMENT
13 institutions, over 100 people, over 10 countries.
OSF/1 DEC/alpha, SunOS, Solaris workstations, PC/Linux RedHat 4.2 & Slackware 3.2.
Duration of experiment: ~5 years, ~4 years data taking (day/night shifts).
OFF-LINE SOFTWARE
I was responsible for track reconstruction. I was developing some individual parts of the off-line software. Among them:
track reconstruction in NOMAD-STAR detector;
track matching and extrapolation among Drift Chambers and STAR detectors;
developing of 2D Kalman filter for NOMAD-STAR sub-detecotr;
vertex reconstruction in NOMAD-STAR sub-detector;
event display for NOMAD-STAR sub-detector;
data visualization and analysis.
The code was developed and tested under Unix operation system using C language, shell scripting (sh, Tcl/Tk, awk/sed). Event display was created using OnX/Motif interface and Ci interpreter (LAL software). I also performed a MC simulation of passive (Pb) target for neutrino trident production.
PICTURE GALERY
NOMAD detector 3D view NOMAD detector top view NOMAD-STAR prototype

NOMAD detector NOMAD numu event NOMAD event (3D view)
Copyright © 1993-2005 Valentin Kuznetsov. All rights reserved.
This page last modified at: Tue Oct 4 14:44:30 EDT 2005