Resource sharing in nuclear physics laboratory classes: A distributed data acquisition system for experiments with shared resources and data management

In our research activities in the Nuclear Physics field, the use of digital pulse processing systems (digitizers) is becoming more common, for their capabilities, flexibility and the simple set-ups that they require. We started to introduce digitizers in the nuclear physics laboratory classes, of the physics master's degree. Such courses should fill the gap that exists between the courses and the real research work, and not only present the basic experimental techniques. While many teaching experiments employ a single detector, digitizers typically offer 2 to 16 acquisition channels. The present work involves the study, implementation, and verification of a distributed data acquisition system (DAQ) that broadcasts the data over a network. One Master Server (MS) is connected to one digitizer and acquires the data from different students experiments. The MS delivers the data streams in real-time to several Experiment Clients (EC). The students' groups control each an EC that can control one or more acquisition channels, depending on the experiment. Moreover, a single experiment can be shared between different EC that collect the same data streams. Therefore, this approach allows a very efficient use of resources, in terms of electronics and the number of expensive nuclear detection systems. A further application is to deliver the data of one Nuclear Physics experiment to several remote laboratories, without requiring radiation regulated areas.