The Darkside-20k Data Acquisition System
Abstract
DarkSide-20k is a WIMP search experiment using liquid argon as a target, designed to perform a background-free search for dark matter with unprecedented sensitivity, and is currently under construction at INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. The detector comprises a dual-phase Time Projection Chamber complemented with external veto systems and is equipped with a total of 2720 SiPM-based readout channels. This work presents the DAQ system designed for DarkSide-20k. The system is capable of continuous, triggerless digitisation of the waveforms with high single-photoelectron detection efficiency and online processing, ensuring data reduction for long-term storage. The DarkSide-20k DAQ system employs commercial CAEN VX2745 digitisers with custom FPGA firmware implementation. Timing and synchronisation across all 48 digitisers are provided by custom Global and Crate Data Manager boards distributing a phase-aligned clock derived from a disciplined rubidium standard. Waveform segments are processed in real time by Front End Processor machines. Data are organised into collections containing whole detector information and distributed across a farm of Time Slice Processors for event reconstruction, classification, and further reduction before storage and offline analysis. A full "Quadrant" of the system, corresponding to one quarter of the final DAQ, has been assembled and validated at TRIUMF laboratory in Canada. The Quadrant has been stress-tested with simultaneous pulses and demonstrated sustained digitizer readout exceeding expected physics rates and stable long-term performance.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.03059,
title = {The Darkside-20k Data Acquisition System},
author = {Fabio Acerbi and Pushparaj Adhikari and Paolo Agnes and Iftikhar Ahmad and Sebastiano Albergo and Ivone F. M. Albuquerque and Thomas Olling Alexander and Andrew Knight Alton and Pierre-Andre Amaudruz and Gioacchino Alex Anastasi and Michele Angiolilli and Elena Aprile and David J. Auty and Maximo Ave Pernas and Oscar Azzolini and Henning Olling Back and Zoe Balmforth and Ana Isabel Barrado Olmedo and Pierre Barrillon and Giovanni Batignani and Swadheen Bharat and Pritindra Bhowmick and Sofia Blua and Valerio Bocci and Walter Bonivento and Bianca Bottino and Mark G. Boulay and Titanilla Braun and Andrzej Buchowicz and Severino Bussino and Jose Busto and Matteo Cadeddu and Mariano Cadoni and Roberta Calabrese and Vincenzo Camillo and Alessio Caminata and Nicola Canci and Andrea Capra and Mauro Caravati and Miguel Cardenas-Montes and Nicola Cargioli and Marco Carlini and Paolo Castello and Paolo Cavalcante and Susana Cebrian and Alexander Chepurnov and Sarthak Choudhary and Luisa Cifarelli and Yann Coadou and Ivan Coarasa and Valentina Cocco and Estefania Conde Vilda and Lucia Consiglio and Harrison Coombes and Andre Filipe Ventura Cortez and Barbara S. Costa and Milena Czubak and Saverio D'Auria and Manuel Dionisio Da Rocha Rolo and Alexander Dainty and Giovanni Darbo and Stefano Davini and Riccardo de Asmundis and Sandro De Cecco and Marzio De Napoli and Giulio Dellacasa and Alexander Derbin and Lea Di Noto and Philippe Di Stefano and Daniel Diaz Mairena and Carlo Dionisi and Grigory Dolganov and Francesca Dordei and Aaron Elersich and Emma Ellingwood and Tyler Erjavec and Niamh Fearon and Marta Fernandez Diaz and Luca Ferro and Andrea Ficorella and Giuliana Fiorillo and Dylon Fleming and Paolo Franchini and Davide Franco and Heriques Frandini Gatti and Federico Gabriele and Devidutta Gahan and Cristiano Galbiati and Grzegorz Galinski and Giacomo Gallina and Marco Garbini and Pablo Garcia Abia and Andrzej Gawdzik and Graham Kurt Giovanetti and Alberto Gola and Luca Grandi and Gianfrancesco Grauso and Giovanni Grilli di Cortona and Alexey Grobov and Maxim Gromov and Julian Guerrero Canovas and Marisa Gulino and Samuel Belayneh Habtemariam and Brianne Rae Hackett and Aksel Hallin and Malgorzata Haranczyk and Timothee Hessel and Celin Hidalgo and James Hollingham and Sosuke Horikawa and Jie Hu and Fabrice Hubaut and Daniel Huff and Theo Hugues and Andrea Ianni and Valerio Ippolito and Ako Jamil and Chris Jillings and Rijeesh Keloth and Nikolas Kemmerich and Ashlea Kemp and Kaori Kondo and George Korga and Lucy Kotsiopoulou and Seraphim Koulosousas and Pablo Kunze and Michael Kuss and Marcin Kuzniak and Maciej Kuzwa and Marco La Commara and Michela Lai and Emmanuel Le Guirriec and Elizabeth Leason and Alfiero Leoni and Lance Lidey and John D Lipp and Marcello Lissia and Ludovico Luzzi and Olga Lychagina and Oliver Macfadyen and Janna Machts and Igor Machulin and Szymon Manecki and Ioannis Manthos and Andrea Marasciulli and Stefano Maria Mari and Camillo Mariani and Jelena Maricic and Maria Martinez and Giuseppe Matteucci and Konstantinos Mavrokoridis and Arthur B. McDonald and Luo Meng and Stefano Merzi and Andrea Messina and Radovan Milincic and Graham Miller and Saverio Minutoli and Ankush Mitra and Jocelyn Monroe and Matteo Morrocchi and Abdulrahman Morsy and Valentina Muratova and Michael Murra and Carlo Muscas and Paolo Musico and Rosario Nania and Marzio Nessi and Grzegorz Nieradka and Konstantinos Nikolopoulos and Evangelia Nikoloudaki and Jaroslaw Nowak and Konstantin Olchanski and Andrey Oleinik and Paolo Organtini and Alfonso Ortiz de Solorzano and Anantha Padmanabhan and Marco Pallavicini and Luciano Pandola and Emilija Pantic and Eugenio Paoloni and Danial Papi and Byungju Park and Grzegorz Pastuszak and Giovanni Paternoster and Riccardo Pavarani and Alec Peck and Paolo Attilio Pegoraro and Krzysztof Pelczar and Ramon Perez and Vicente Pesudo and Stefano Piacentini and Noemi Pino and Guillaume Plante and Andrea Pietro Pocar and Stephen Pordes and Pascal Pralavorio and Elettra Preosti and Darren Price and George Prior and Manuel Pronesti and Sebastiana Puglia and Maria Cecilia Queiroga Bazetto and Fabrizio Raffaelli and Francesco Ragusa and Yorck Ramachers and Alejandro Ramirez and Sudikshan Ravinthiran and Marco Razeti and Andrew Lee Renshaw and Aras Repond and Marco Rescigno and Silvia Resconi and Fabrice Retiere and Ash Ritchie-Yates and Angelo Rivetti and Adam Roberts and Conner Roberts and Diego Rodriguez Rodas and Giovanni Rogers and Luciano Romero and Matteo Rossi and Dmitry Rudik and James Runge and Maria Adriana Sabia and Camilla Salerno and Paolo Salomone and Simone Sanfilippo and Daria Santone and Roberto Santorelli and Edivaldo M. Santos and Isobel Sargeant and Maria Luisa Sarsa and Claudio Savarese and Eugenio Scapparone and Fred Schuckman and Dmitriy Semenov and Carmen Seoane and Michela Sestu and Veronika Shalamova and Sanjay Sharma Poudel and Marino Simeone and Peter Skensved and Mikhail Skorokhvatov and Taisiia Smirnova and Ben Smith and Robert Smith and Franco Spadoni and Martin Spangenberg and Arianna Steri and Vincenzo Stornelli and Simone Stracka and Allan Sung and Clea Sunny and Yury Suvorov and Andrzej M Szelc and Oscar Taborda and Benjamin Tam and Roberto Tartaglia and Alan Taylor and Jonathan Taylor and Gemma Testera and Kevin Thieme and Angus Thompson and Sebastian Torres-Lara and Alessia Tricomi and Sara Tullio and Evgeniy Unzhakov and Marie Van Uffelen and Pedro Ventura and Guillermo Vera Diaz and Simon Viel and Alina Vishneva and Bruce Vogelaar and Joost Vossebeld and Bansari Vyas and Masayuki Wada and Marek Bohdan Walczak and Yi Wang and Shawn Westerdale and Laurie Williams and Marcin Marian Wojcik and Mariusz Wojcik and Changgen Yang and Jilong Yin and Azam Zabihi and Paul Zakhary and Andrea Zani and Haoxiang Zhan and Yongpeng Zhang and Antonino Zichichi and Grzegorz Zuzel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.03059},
year = {2026}
}