Calibration of a Highly Granular Hadronic Calorimeter with SiPM Readout

TL;DR

This paper details the calibration and testing of a highly granular hadronic calorimeter with SiPM readout, including temperature dependence, saturation behavior, and novel calibration methods using muons and hadronic showers.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calibration approach for a large SiPM-based calorimeter, including novel methods using minimum-ionizing track segments.

Findings

Successful calibration of the calorimeter with muons

Detailed analysis of SiPM saturation behavior

Temperature dependence of calorimeter signals characterized

Abstract

A highly granular hadronic calorimeter (HCAL) based on scintillator tiles with individual readout by silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) has been constructed by the CALICE collaboration and has been tested extensively in particle beams at CERN. The 7608 SiPMs coupled to scintillator tiles in the approximately 1 cubic meter large calorimeter allow large sample studies of behavior of these devices under varying voltage and temperature as well as their saturation behavior. We also present detailed studies of the temperature dependence of the calorimeter signal in muon and hadron beams. The calibration of the full calorimeter using muons is discussed. In addition, a novel method for calibration and detector studies using minimum-ionizing track segments in hadronic showers, is explored.