A prototype of the data quality pipeline of the Online Observation Quality System of ASTRI-Mini Array telescope system

Gamma-ray astronomy investigates the physics of the universe and the characteristics of celestial objects through gamma rays. Gamma-rays are the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum, emitted in some of the brightest events in the universe, such as pulsars, quasars, and supernova remnants. Gamma rays can be observed with satellites or ground-based telescopes. The latter allow to detect gamma rays in the very high energy range with the indirect Cherenkov technique. When highly energetic photons enter Earth's atmosphere, they generate air showers, cascades of particles whose fast motion produces elusive flashes of blue Cherenkov light in the sky. This thesis discusses the research conducted at the Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in collaboration with the international project, guided by INAF, for ground-based gamma-ray astrophysics, ASTRI Mini-Array. The focus is on the Online Observation Quality System (OOQS), which conducts a quick look analysis during the telescope observation. The Cherenkov Camera Data Quality Checker is the OOQS component that performs real-time quality checks on the data acquired at high frequency, up to 1000\,Hz, and with a total bandwidth of 148MB/s, from the nine Cherenkov Cameras. The thesis presents the implementation of the OOQS-Pipeline, a software prototype that receives scientific packets from a Cherenkov Camera, performs quality analysis, and stores the results. The pipeline consists of three main applications: Kafka-Consumer, DQ-Analysis, and DQ-Aggregator. The pipeline was tested on a server having similar performance as the ones of the Array Observing Site, and results indicate that it is possible to acquire the maximum data flow produced by the cameras. Overall, the thesis presents an important contribution to the ASTRI Mini-Array project, about the development of the first version of the OOQS-Pipeline, which will maximize observation time with quality data passing the verification thresholds.