https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7151-3
Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory
Database support of detector operation and data analysis in the DEAP-3600 Dark Matter experiment
1
Department of Physics E15, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Str. 1, 85748, Garching, Germany
2
TRIUMF, Vancouver, V6T 2A3, Canada
* e-mail: tina.pollmann@tum.de
Received:
16
May
2019
Accepted:
17
July
2019
Published online:
14
August
2019
The DEAP-3600 detector searches for dark matter interactions on a 3.3 tonne liquid argon target. Over nearly a decade, from start of detector construction through the end of the data analysis phase, well over 200 scientists will have contributed to the project. The DEAP-3600 detector will amass in excess of 900 TB of data representing more than 10
particle interactions, a few of which could be from dark matter. At the same time, metadata exceeding 80 GB will be generated. This metadata is crucial for organizing and interpreting the dark matter search data and contains both structured and unstructured information. The scale of the data collected, the important role of metadata in interpreting it, the number of people involved, and the long lifetime of the project necessitate an industrialized approach to metadata management. We describe how the CouchDB and the PostgreSQL database systems were integrated into the DEAP detector operation and analysis workflows. This integration provides unified, distributed access to both structured (PostgreSQL) and unstructured (CouchDB) metadata at runtime of the data analysis software. It also supports operational and reporting requirements.
© The Author(s), 2019
