Accelerating the development of novel technologies for nuclear physics

加速核物理新技术发展

• 批准号: ST/W005646/1
• 负责人: Laura Joanne Harkness-Brennan
• 金额: $ 2.62万
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FW005646%2F1
• 关键词: Accelerating; development; novel; technologies; nuclear

Within the field of Nuclear Instrumentation, the utilisation of Pulse Shape Analysis (PSA) for gamma-ray localisation has proven immensely useful in pushing the envelope of Nuclear Physics both in Nuclear Structure and by improving the tracking and imaging capabilities of systems for industrial and medical applications. As the demand from the nuclear community for these tracking detectors increases, the requirement for efficient PSA algorithms and accurate simulations of novel detector geometries is paramount to ensuring that the UK Nuclear Physics community remains at the forefront of innovation. This project focuses on using high performance computing systems to accelerate the development of techniques primarily for one of the state-of-the-art nuclear spectrometers in Europe, the AGATA array. The techniques will process large data sets to determine where the gamma rays interact within the detector, underpinned by a theoretical understanding of how we expect the AGATA detectors to respond.The move from conventional CPU-based algorithms to hyper-parallelised GPU-based algorithms is one avenue of research that shows promise. These techniques show great performance scaling with GPU cores with some algorithms capable of running several orders of magnitude faster (~450x) than conventional PSA techniques used in AGATA whilst providing comparable (and sometimes superior) accuracy. GPU-based algorithms provide a marked benefit for large-scale projects like AGATA, not only are they able to meet the processing requirements for online-PSA and tracking but they also free up resources for more complex analyses to be performed. Current resources have been sufficient to prototype the use of these techniques on simple cases, such as when a gamma-ray interact just once within an AGATA detector. However, when the gamma-ray interacts many times, as is likely when the gamma-ray is very energetic, it becomes much more challenging to identify where those interactions have taken place. This project will use high performance computing equipment to accelerate the development of GPU-based algorithms that can unpick the complexity of multiple-interaction events at a local level. In the long term, the computing equipment can also be used to accelerate other research tasks that are important to the UK nuclear physics community, such as running simulations to design new radiation sensors for use in nuclear structure physics experiments.

在核仪器领域中，脉冲形状分析（PSA）用于伽马射线定位（PSA）在核结构中以及通过提高工业和医疗应用系统系统的跟踪和成像能力方面非常有用。随着核群落对这些跟踪探测器的需求增加，对新探测器几何形状的有效PSA算法和准确模拟的需求对于确保英国核物理界仍然是创新的前沿至关重要。该项目着重于使用高性能计算系统来加速欧洲最先进的核光谱仪AGATA阵列的技术的发展。这些技术将处理大型数据集，以确定伽马射线在检测器中的相互作用的位置，这是对我们期望AGATA探测器响应的理论理解的基础。从基于CPU的算法转向基于GPU的超平行性GPU算法的转变是研究的一项研究。这些技术具有GPU核心的出色性能缩放，具有某些算法能够比AGATA中使用的常规PSA技术更快地运行多个数量级（〜450x），同时提供了可比的（有时是优越）的精度。基于GPU的算法为Agata等大型项目提供了明显的好处，不仅可以满足在线PSA和跟踪的处理要求，而且还可以释放资源以进行更复杂的分析。当前的资源足以使这些技术在简单的情况下使用这些技术，例如，伽马射线仅在AGATA检测器中一次相互作用时。但是，当伽马射线相互作用很多次时，当伽马射线非常有活力时，确定这些相互作用发生的位置变得更加具有挑战性。该项目将使用高性能计算设备来加速基于GPU的算法的开发，这些算法可以取消本地一级多重相互作用事件的复杂性。从长远来看，计算设备还可以用于加速对英国核物理社区重要的其他研究任务，例如运行模拟设计新的辐射传感器，以用于核结构物理实验。