No Arabic abstract
Fast hadrons have been observed to cause a cumulative damage in Lead Tungstate and LYSO crystals. The underlying mechanism has been proven to be the creation of fission tracks, which act as scattering centres, thus reducing the light collection efficiency. For calorimetry applications in an environment where large, fast hadron fluences are anticipated, predictions about damage in crystals are of great importance for making an informed choice of technology. In the study presented here, simulations using the FLUKA package have been performed on Lead Tungstate, LYSO and Cerium Fluoride, and their results have been compared with measurements. The agreement that is found between simulation results and experimental measurements allows to conclude that the damage amplitude in a given material can be predicted with a precision that is sufficient to anticipate the damage expected during detector operation.
A photomultiplier setup for precise relative CsI(Tl) crystal light yield and uniformity measurements is described. It is used for wrapping material studies to optimize the uniformity and the yield of the light output of 36 cm long crystals. The uniformity is an important property in high energy photon calorimetry. Results of an optimization of photodiode coupling to crystals, the influence of temperature and radiation damage to light and photoelectron yield are also presented.
We employed two independent methods to study possible damage to the scintillation mechanism in lead tungstate crystals due to irradiation by a 34 GeV pion beam. First, 10 crystals were irradiated simultaneously over 30 hours by a narrow beam, so that only a small region of each crystal was affected. We studied the effect of the irradiation on the light output non-uniformity. If a localized degradation was observed, it would indicate damage to the scintillation mechanism. Secondly, we detected light output using two phototubes attached to sides of a crystal. Since these phototubes detect scintillation light only from a small localized region, the effect of transmission loss should be minimal. We did not see any statistically significant evidence for scintillation mechanism damage with either method. The effect is consistent with zero, and the upper limit is 0.5% at 95% C.L.
The recent progress in R&D of the Micromegas detectors for hadronic calorimetry including new engineering-technical solutions, electronics development, and accompanying simulation studies with emphasis on the comparison of the physics performance of the analog and digital readout is described. The developed prototypes are with 2 bit digital readout to exploit the Micromegas proportional mode and thus improve the calorimeter linearity. In addition, measurements of detection efficiency, hit multiplicity, and energy shower profiles obtained during the exposure of small size prototypes to radioactive source quanta, cosmic particles and accelerator beams are reported. Eventually, the status of a large scale chamber (1{times}1 m2) are also presented with prospective towards the construction of a 1 m3 digital calorimeter consisting of 40 such chambers.
Studies of the radiation hardness of lead tungstate crystals produced by the Bogoroditsk Techno-Chemical Plant in Russia and the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics in China have been carried out at IHEP, Protvino. The crystals were irradiated by a 40-GeV pion beam. After full recovery, the same crystals were irradiated using a $^{137}Cs$ $gamma$-ray source. The dose rate profiles along the crystal length were observed to be quite similar. We compare the effects of the two types of radiation on the crystals light output.
The DHCAL, the Digital Hadron Calorimeter, is a prototype calorimeter based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs). The design emphasizes the imaging capabilities of the detector in an effort to optimize the calorimeter for the application of Particle Flow Algorithms (PFAs) to the reconstruction of hadronic jet energies in a colliding beam environment. The readout of the chambers is segmented into 1 x 1 cm2 pads, each read out with a 1-bit (single threshold) resolution. The prototype with approximately 500,000 readout channels underwent extensive testing in both the Fermilab and CERN test beams. This talk presents preliminary findings from the analysis of data collected at the test beams.