A Fast and Simple Trigger for High Energy Cosmics

A massive parallel trigger system for efficient data reduction and event recognition is under design for the 14400 channels of the AUGER fluorescence detector. The trigger is combined with a cost-effective control and readout by PCI devices. The first level trigger includes a count-rate dependent trigger-threshold and suppresses Cerenkov pulses, and the second level trigger will identify straight tracks of cosmics in the AUGER fluorescence detector. Configurable FPGAs are used to enable parallel processing and yields a cheap high-speed data handling solution. Furthermore, the use of one PCI-board type for the readout allows a very cost-effective solution for the overall system. By digital pulse-shape recognition more than 90 % of the Cerenkov pulses will be suppressed. Due to fast hardware event-pattern recognition of three adjacent pixels within the detector we expect an excellent noise reduction of about 3•10 5 .