VERITAS Data Acquisition and Analysis Systems

We describe the design of data acquisition and analysis systems for the VERITAS TeV observatory. With an expected average trigger rate as high as 1 kHz, the data acquisition system must be capable of handling data rates up to about 15 MBytes/s. We describe test results on the performance of a prototype system and show that the system has already exceeded the specifications. Data stream from the data acquisition system is fed, in real time, to a data analysis system that provides critical diagnostic information, as well as alerts of bright transient phenomena of scientific interest. Final data products are stored as HDF5 files to facilitate offline analysis. We describe a general framework within which offline analysis software may be developed.