16-point discrete Fourier transform based on the Radix-2 FFT algorithm implemented into cyclone FPGA as the UHECR trigger for horizontal air showers in the Pierre Auger Observatory

Extremely rare flux of UHERC requires sophisticated detection techniques. Standard methods oriented on the typical events may not be sensitive enough to capture rare events, crucial to fix a discrepancy in the current data or to confirm/reject some new hypothesis. Currently used triggers in water Cherenkov tanks in the Pierre Auger surface detector, which select events above some amplitude thresholds or investigate a length of traces are not optimized to the horizontal and very inclined showers, interesting as potentially generated by neutrinos. Those showers could be triggered using their signatures: i.e. a curvature of the shower front, transformed on the rise time of traces or muon component giving early peak for “old” showers. Currently available powerful and cost-effective FPGAs provide sufficient resources to implement new triggers not available in the past. The paper describes the implementation proposal of 16-point discrete Fourier transform based on the Radix-2 FFT algorithm into Altera Cyclone FPGA, used in the 3rd generation of the surface detector trigger. All complex coefficients are calculated online in heavy pipelined routines. The register performance ∼200MHz and relatively low resources occupancy ∼2000∼2000 logic elements/channel for 10-bit resolution provide a powerful tool to trigger the events on the traces characteristic in the frequency domain. The FFT code has been successively merged to the code of the 1st surface selector level trigger of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is planned to be tested in real pampas environment.