ALICE electromagnetic calorimeter prototype test

Abstract

This Memorandum of Understanding between the Test Beam collaborators and Fermilab is for the use of beam time at Fermilab during the Fall, 2005 Meson Test Beam Run. The experimenters plan to measure the energy, position, and time resolution of prototype modules of a large electromagnetic calorimeter proposed to be installed in the ALICE experiment at the LHC. The ALICE experiment is one of the three large approved LHC experiments, with ALICE placing special emphasis on the LHC heavy-ion program. The large electromagnetic calorimeter (EMCal) is a US initiative that is endorsed by the ALICE collaboration and is currently in the early stages of review by the Nuclear Physics Division of the DOE. The installation in the test beam at FNAL and test beam measurements will be carried out by the US members of the ALICE collaboration (ALICE-USA). The overall design of the ALICE EMCal is heavily influenced by its location within the ALICE L3 magnet. The EMCal is to be located inside the large room temperature magnet within a cylindrical integration volume approximately l12cm deep, by 5.6m in length, sandwiched between the ALICE TPC space frame and the L3 magnet coils. The chosen technology is a layered Pb-scintillator sampling calorimeter with a longitudinal pitch of 1.6mm Pb and 1.6mm scintillator. The full detector spans {eta} = -0.7 to {eta} = 0.7 with an azimuthal acceptance of {Delta}{phi} = 120{sup o}. The EMCal readout is of a ''Shish-Kabob'' type similar to the PHENIX Pb-scintillator sampling calorimeter in which the scintillation light is collected via wavelength shifting fibers running through the Pb-scintillator tiles perpendicular to the front surface. The detector is segmented into {approx}14000 towers. The basic structural units of the calorimeter are supermodules, each subtending approximately {approx}20{sup o} in {Delta}{phi} and 0.7 units in {Delta}{eta}. Supermodules are assembled from individual modules. The modules are further segmented into 2 x 2 individually read out towers. The fibers from an individual tower are grouped together to form readout tower bundles. These are each optically coupled to an avalanche photodiode (APO) via a short light guide to provide some spatial optical mixing and to match the fiber bundle to the APO. The module assembly is indicated in Figure l. The supermodules weigh about 9.6 tons and are the basic units handled during installation. Each supermodule is roughly I45cm wide at the front surface by 350cm long with an active depth of 24.5cm (at {eta} = 0) plus an additional 6.6 cm of depth in structural plates. The physical characteristics of the ALICE EMCal are summarized in Table 1. The EMCal test beam measurements at FNAL will utilize a stacked 4 x 4 array of prototype EMCal modules (8 x 8 towers). All towers will be instrumented with the same model APO and preamplifier as will be used in the ALICE experiment and all channels will be readout with existing prototype front end electronics intended for use in ALICE. The goals of the test beam measurements are: To investigate the energy resolution, linearity, uniformity, and position resolution, using electron beams; To study the energy dependence of the response to electrons and hadrons to determine the particle identification capabilities of the EMCal by shower shape; And to investigate the timing characteristics of the energy signal for crude time-of-flight measurement ({approx} 1ns) for use for anti-neutron rejection. Measurements will be made for comparison with different signal shaping times in the front end electronics.