No Arabic abstract
In April 2019, the Baikal-GVD collaboration finished the installation of the fourth and fifth clusters of the neutrino telescope Baikal-GVD. Momentarily, 1440 Optical Modules (OM) are installed in the largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Baikal, instrumenting 0.25 cubic km of sensitive volume. The Baikal-GVD is thus the largest neutrino telescope on the Northern Hemisphere. The first phase of the detector construction is going to be finished in 2021 with 9 clusters, 2592 OMs in total, however the already installed clusters are stand-alone units which are independently operational and taking data from their commissioning. Huge number of channels as well as strict requirements for the precision of the time and charge calibration (ns, p.e.) make calibration procedures vital and very complex tasks. The inter cluster time calibration is performed with numerous calibration systems. The charge calibration is carried out with a Single Photo-Electron peak. The various data acquired during the last three years in regular and special calibration runs validate successful performance of the calibration systems and of the developed calibration techniques. The precision of the charge calibration has been improved and the time dependence of the obtained calibration parameters have been cross-checked. The multiple calibration sources verified a 1.5 - 2.0 ns precision of the in-situ time calibrations. The time walk effect has been studied in detail with in situ specialized calibration runs.
The main purpose of the Baikal-GVD Data Quality Monitoring (DQM) system is to monitor the status of the detector and collected data. The system estimates quality of the recorded signals and performs the data validation. The DQM system is integrated with the Baikal-GVDs unified software framework (BARS) and operates in quasi-online manner. This allows us to react promptly and effectively to the changes in the telescope conditions.
The quality of the incoming experimental data has a significant importance for both analysis and running the experiment. The main point of the Baikal-GVD DQM system is to monitor the status of the detector and obtained data on the run-by-run based analysis. It should be fast enough to be able to provide analysis results to detector shifter and for participation in the global multi-messaging system.
The Prototyping phase of the BAIKAL-GVD project has been started in April 2011 with the deployment of a three string engineering array which comprises all basic elements and systems of the Gigaton Volume Detector (GVD) in Lake Baikal. In April 2012 the version of engineering array which comprises the first full-scale string of the GVD demonstration cluster has been deployed and operated during 2012. The first stage of the GVD demonstration cluster which consists of three strings is deployed in April 2013. We review the Prototyping phase of the BAIKAL-GVD project and describe the configuration and design of the 2013 engineering array.
Currently in Lake Baikal, a new generation neutrino telescope is being deployed: the deep underwater Cherenkov detector of a cubic-kilometer scale Baikal-GVD. Completion of the first stage of the telescope construction is planned for 2021 with the implementation of 9 clusters. Each cluster is a completely independent unit in all the aspects: triggering, calibration, data transfer, etc. A high-energy particle might leave its trace in more than a single cluster. To be able to merge events caused by such a particle in more clusters, the appropriate inter-cluster time synchronization is vital.
Baikal-GVD is a next generation, kilometer-scale neutrino telescope under construction in Lake Baikal. It is designed to detect astrophysical neutrino fluxes at energies from a few TeV up to 100 PeV. GVD is formed by multi-megaton subarrays (clusters). The array construction started in 2015 by deployment of a reduced-size demonstration cluster named Dubna. The first cluster in its baseline configuration was deployed in 2016, the second in 2017 and the third in 2018. The full scale GVD will be an array of ~10000 light sensors with an instrumented volume of about 2 cubic km. The first phase (GVD-1) is planned to be completed by 2020-2021. It will comprise 8 clusters with 2304 light sensors in total. We describe the design of Baikal-GVD and present selected results obtained in 2015-2017.