A study of the energy dependence of the mean, truncated mean, and most probable energy deposition of high-energy muons in sampling calorimeters

Abstract

We have extracted the momentum dependence of the mean, the truncated mean and the most probable value of the energy deposited in a segmented, iron-scintillator, hadron calorimeter by high-energy muons. Data were drawn from a sample of momentum-analyzed, high-energy muons produced in charged-current neutrino interactions. The truncated mean energy deposition of high-energy muons traversing 20 calorimeter segments increases by approximately 16% per 100 GeV c increase in muon momentum over the range 25−125 GeV c ; the most probable energy deposition increases by approximately 7%. These results are important for experiments at high-energy colliders (e.g., Tevatron, SSC and LHC) which use the dE dx of high-energy muons to calibrate the response of electromagnetic and hadron calorimeters with tower geometry. The data are in qualitative agreement with GEANT3 (v3.15/308a) simulations.