ESCAPE (European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle physics ESFRI research infrastructures) brings together the astronomy, astroparticle and particle physics communities.
The ESCAPE science projects develop tools and infrastructures to maximise collaboration and science outputs in Astronomy and Particle Physics, and enable access to open data and software on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) through ESCAPE infrastructure. This is being done in particular via two thematic use cases: the Dark Matter Project, and the Extreme Universe project.
- The Dark Matter Project provides the community with tools to bring together diverse experimental results in the search for evidence of Dark Matter, and to perform new analyses incorporating data from complementary searches.
- The Extreme Universe Project develops a sustainable platform for multi-messenger/multi-probe astronomy (MMA), to enable studies of transient astrophysical phenomena that benefit from the combined use of many instruments at different wavelengths and with different probe types.
Researchers
Initiatives involved
Cluster
Disciplinary fields
Challenge
Within ESCAPE, two thematic science projects have used of a variety of ESCAPE services, to demonstrate that they enable the required scientific functionality, which will be deployed within the EOSC context to ensure that the ESCAPE “EOSC cell” is fully compatible with the long-term EOSC environment.
- The goal of the Dark Matter Project is to highlight the synergies between different communities and experiments searching for dark matter by producing new results and making the necessary data and software tools fully available, in particular focusing on data management, data analysis and computing. This challenge will be achieved by using experimental data and software procedures from selected direct detection, indirect detection, and particle collider experiments involved in ESCAPE as prototypes for sustainable end-to-end analysis pipelines.
- In the Extreme Universe Project, we focus on the understanding of extreme phenomena, such as Black Holes, Fast Radio Bursts, Active Galactic Nuclei, and Gamma-Ray Bursts, which require the combined observations from a variety of instruments from Gravitational Wave detectors, neutrino detectors and telescopes at many electromagnetic wavelengths. Many such observations are based on the "trigger" of one instrument generating follow-ups from others at different timescales from seconds to days. In addition, a platform where data from all the various observations can be brought together and analysed is essential.
Solution
In the Dark Matter Project all the digital objects from new and complementary DM analyses will be brought together within the ESCAPE services infrastructure (Data Lake, Software Catalogue, Analysis Platform). We will make seamless use of that in EOSC to store, distribute and provide data and software access to the broad dark matter scientific community. This is a unique link between DM as a fundamental science question and the Open Science services needed to answer it that benefits the scientific community as a whole. This will serve as a stepping stone to build a virtual research environment within EOSC. New dark matter searches from experiments in ESCAPE will rely on services within EOSC-Future to see their experimental data, simulations and software procedures developed within sustainable analysis pipelines and converge into a bigger picture to constrain or discover dark matter.
The Extreme Universe Project intends to develop a sustainable platform within which to enable multi-messenger/multi-probe astronomy (MMA). It consists of different pilot projects of distinct disciplines brought together, requiring that this collaboration needs to have a strong ground for future research activities. The project aims at implementing an integrated platform for Multi-Messenger Astronomy by removing barriers and exploiting complementarities across different communities, as well as building a transversal environment through artificial intelligence, new analysis methods and a cloud-based analysis dashboard, to allow users to exploit services from the e-infrastructures. The Virtual Research Environment platform and data lake enable the EU team to rapidly and simply exchange resources, perform processing, and analyse results from this diverse set of measurements.
Impact
A joint discovery of the nature of dark matter requires different experiments and inputs (indirect detection, direct detection and collider searches). It requires interoperable and reproducible analyses. The Dark Matter Project builds a prototype that fulfils these requirements. During the analysis design, we will identify innovative algorithms (e.g. machine learning, but also procedures to reconstruct images to distinguish signal and background) that can be individually highlighted and shared for use by other scientific communities and / or in society.
Scientists working in Gravitational Wave astronomy and multi-messenger astronomy can take advantage of the tools and infrastructures developed inside ESCAPE, as well as build innovative applications from these tools. Functional e-infrastructures are being created, enabling research teams and individuals to perform complex analyses on large, complex, and potentially heterogeneous data through compute facilities, data, and software platforms. For instance, the virtual research environment (VRE) allows access to data and performs computation on the cloud. A sustainable platform for multi-messenger astronomy will be implemented.
