Construction and performance of a silicon photomultiplier/extruded scintillator tail-catcher and muon-tracker

Abstract

A prototype module for an International Linear Collider (ILC) detector was\nbuilt, installed, and tested between 2006 and 2009 at CERN and Fermilab as part\nof the CALICE test beam program, in order to study the possibilities of\nextending energy sampling behind a hadronic calorimeter and to study the\npossibilities of providing muon tracking. The "tail catcher/muon tracker"\n(TCMT) is composed of 320 extruded scintillator strips (dimensions 1000 mm x 50\nmm x 5 mm) packaged in 16 one-meter square planes interleaved between steel\nplates. The scintillator strips were read out with wavelength shifting fibers\nand silicon photomultipliers. The planes were arranged with alternating\nhorizontal and vertical strip orientations. Data were collected for muons and\npions in the energy range 6 GeV to 80 GeV. Utilizing data taken in 2006, this\npaper describes the design and construction of the TCMT, performance\ncharacteristics, and a beam-based evaluation of the ability of the TCMT to\nimprove hadronic energy resolution in a prototype ILC detector. For a typical\nconfiguration of an ILC detector with a coil situated outside a calorimeter\nsystem with a thickness of 5.5 nuclear interaction lengths, a TCMT would\nimprove relative energy resolution by 6-16 % for pions between 20 and 80 GeV.\n