During proton collisions at the LHC, the FASER experiment records up to 1500 events per second using an open source data acquisition (DAQ) software framework developed at CERN. The DAQ software receives dedicated data fragments from subcomponents on the detector, packs them into a single event and writes completed events to file. FASER currently records its data as raw bit stream to disk but is hitting storage space limitations. The project aims is to explore methods of real-time data compression to reduce FASER’s output data size.
The task is to make use of state-of-the-art lossless C++ compression libraries and targeted custom algorithms to compress raw data read out of the FASER detector in real-time and decompress data for event analysis. One will need to explore the best method of implementation, considering at which level of event building data compression can be most effectively implemented. It will need to be ensured that the implementation causes no undue bottlenecks during data acquisition, and that data can be easily decompressed for physics analysis.
Please contact Claire Antel and Brian Petersen for more details.