Design, Construction and Commissioning of the Digital Hadron Calorimeter - DHCAL

TL;DR

This paper details the design, construction, and testing of a highly segmented digital hadron calorimeter using RPCs, optimized for Particle Flow Algorithms in future lepton collider detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, large-scale digital hadron calorimeter prototype with 500,000 channels, demonstrating its construction and commissioning for future collider applications.

Findings

Successful construction and commissioning of the prototype

Extensive testing in Fermilab and CERN test beams

Validation of digital readout for hadron energy measurement

Abstract

A novel hadron calorimeter is being developed for future lepton colliding beam detectors. The calorimeter is optimized for the application of Particle Flow Algorithms (PFAs) to the measurement of hadronic jets and features a very finely segmented readout with 1 x 1 cm2 cells. The active media of the calorimeter are Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) with a digital, i.e. one-bit, readout. To first order the energy of incident particles in this calorimeter is reconstructed as being proportional to the number of pads with a signal over a given threshold. A large-scale prototype calorimeter with approximately 500,000 readout channels has been built and underwent extensive testing in the Fermilab and CERN test beams. This paper reports on the design, construction, and commissioning of this prototype calorimeter.