Development of online software tools for Precision Proton Spectrometer (CMS-PPS/CERN)

The Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS) is a subdetector of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), made of a set of near-beam movable detectors, housed in Roman Pot (RP) units, symmetrically installed along the LHC beam pipe about 200m from the CMS Interaction Point (IP5). PPS is designed for precise measurements of the position, translated in momentum loss, and the time of flight of protons scattered in a very forward region. In light of that, the combination of the forward detector acceptances and precise time measurements O(−12)s are very powerful for gamma-gamma high masses processes searches. This summer student project focus on the PPS data acquisition system (DAQ) and online software. PPS DAQ is fully integrated with the CMS DAQ online environment, which relies on software tools for communication to configure the detector Final State Machines (FSM). These FSMs are mostly detector related to prepare each CMS subsystem for the readout in an automatized process and they are controlled by a scalable software framework, referred as XDAQ. Finally, the development of a new online software utility, written in an object-oriented programming language, which controls the PPS detectors through a slow control optical link will be presented.