Hadronic showers in the CALICE calorimeter prototypes

TL;DR

This paper reports on the analysis of hadronic showers in highly granular calorimeter prototypes tested at CERN, comparing experimental data with GEANT4 simulations to evaluate detector response and energy resolution.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed study of hadronic shower properties in the CALICE calorimeter prototypes, including response linearity and energy resolution, with comparisons to simulation.

Findings

Hadronic shower properties are well described by GEANT4 simulations.

The calorimeters achieve good linearity in response to hadronic events.

Simple weighting algorithms improve energy resolution based on local energy density.

Abstract

The CALICE collaboration has constructed highly granular electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeter prototypes to evaluate technologies for the use in detector systems at the future International Linear Collider. These calorimeters have been tested extensively in particle beams at CERN and at Fermilab. We present preliminary results of an analysis of hadronic events in the combined system under test at CERN in 2006 and 2007, comprising a SiW ECAL, a scintillator tile HCAL and a scintillator strip tail catcher, the latter two with SiPM readout. The properties of hadronic showers in the HCAL, compared to simulations performed with GEANT4, are discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of the linearity of the detector response and on the single particle energy resolution achievable with simple weighting algorithms based on the local energy density in the hadronic showers.