Simulation study of energy resolution, position resolution and $pi^0$-$gamma$ separation of a sampling electromagnetic calorimeter at high energies

A simulation study of energy resolution, position resolution, and $pi^0$-$gamma$ separation using multivariate methods of a sampling calorimeter is presented. As a realistic example, the geometry of the calorimeter is taken from the design geometry of the Shashlik calorimeter which was considered as a candidate for CMS endcap for the phase II of LHC running. The methods proposed in this paper can be easily adapted to various geometrical layouts of a sampling calorimeter. Energy resolution is studied for different layouts and different absorber-scintillator combinations of the Shashlik detector. It is shown that a boosted decision tree using fine grained information of the calorimeter can perform three times better than a cut-based method for separation of $pi^0$ from $gamma$ over a large energy range of 20 GeV-200 GeV.