Hadron Calorimeter Research Articles

The (Un)reasonable Effectiveness of Neural Network in Cherenkov Calorimetry

We report a greater than factor of two improvement in the hadronic energy resolution of a simulated Cherenkov calorimeter by estimating the energy with machine learning over traditional techniques. The prompt signal formation and energy threshold properties of Cherenkov radiation provide identifiable features that machine learning techniques can exploit to produce a superior model for energy reconstruction. We simulated a quartz-fiber calorimeter via the GEANT4 framework to study the reconstruction techniques in single events. We compared the machine learning-based reconstruction performance to the traditional simple sum of signal and dual-readout techniques that use both Cherenkov and scintillation signals. We describe why this game-changing approach to Cherenkov hadron calorimetry excels and our plans for a dedicated beam test to validate these findings with a fast, radiation-hard hadron calorimeter prototype.

Including Calorimeter Test Beams in Geant-val—The Physics Validation Testing Suite of Geant4

The Geant4 simulation toolkit is currently adopted by many particle physics experiments, including those at the Large Hadron Collider and the ones proposed for future lepton and hadron colliders. In the present era of precision tests for the Standard Model and increasingly detailed detectors proposed for the future colliders scenario, Geant4 plays a key role. It is required to remain a reliable and stable toolkit for detector simulations and at the same time undergo major improvements in both physics accuracy and computational performance. Calorimeter beam tests involve various particles at different energy scales and represent ideal benchmarks for the physics modeling and assessment of Monte Carlo tools for radiation–matter simulation. We present the first results of a broad validation campaign on test beam data targeting data deployment and preservation with geant-val, the Geant4 validation and testing suite. We investigate the Geant4 capability to model the calorimeter response, energy fluctuations, and shower shapes using data from the ATLAS hadronic end-cap calorimeter and the CALICE silicon-tungsten calorimeter. The evolution over the recent years of the recommended set of physics processes for high-energy physics applications is outlined and compared to alternative models for hadronic interactions.

Development of Novel Designs of Resistive Plate Chambers

Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) are a key active media of the muon systems of current and future collider experiments as well as the CALICE (semi-)digital hadron calorimeter. The outstanding issues with RPCs can be listed as the loss of efficiency for the detection of particles when subjected to high particle fluxes and the limitations associated with the common RPC gases. We developed novel RPC designs with: low resistivity glass plates; a single resistive plate; and a single resistive plate and a special anode plate coated with high secondary electron emission yield material. The cosmic and beam tests confirmed the viability of these new approaches for calorimetric applications. The chambers also have improved single-particle response, such as a pad multiplicity close to unity. Here, we report on the construction of various different glass RPC designs and their performance measurements in laboratory tests and with particle beams. We also discuss future test plans, which include the long-term performance tests of the newly developed RPCs, investigation of minimal gas flow chambers, and feasibility study for the large-size chambers.

Development of a Novel Highly Granular Hadronic Calorimeter with Scintillating Glass Tiles

Based on the particle-flow paradigm, a new hadronic calorimeter (HCAL) with scintillating glass tiles is proposed to address major challenges from precision measurements of jets at the future lepton colliders, such as the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC). Tiles of high-density scintillating glass, with a high-energy sampling fraction, can significantly improve the hadronic energy resolution in the low-energy region (typically below 10 GeV for major jet components at Higgs factories). The hadronic energy resolution of single hadrons and the effects of key parameters of scintillating glass have been evaluated in the Geant4 full simulation, followed by the physics benchmark studies on the Higgs boson with jets in the final state. R&D efforts of scintillating glass materials are ongoing within a dedicated collaboration since 2021 with the aim to achieve a high light yield, a high density, and a low cost. Measurements have been performed for the first batches of scintillating glass samples including the light yield, emission and scintillation spectra, scintillation decay times, and cosmic responses. An optical simulation model of a single scintillating glass tile has been established to provide guidance in the development of scintillating glass. Highlights of the expected detector performance and the latest scintillating glass developments are presented in this contribution.

Phase 1 upgrade of the CMS Hadron Barrel Calorimeter

The Phase 1 upgrade of the CMS Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) involved the installation of new silicon photomultiplier devices (SiPMs), which replaced older hybrid photodiodes (HPDs). SiPMs measure the scintillator light output with better signal/noise. The upgraded readout electronics also allow for increased longitudinal segmentation and better performance. This report describes the design, testing, installation, and commissioning of the HCAL Barrel Phase 1 upgrade. Performance results for the HCAL Endcap during Run 2 are presented and expectations for the HCAL Barrel during Run 3 are discussed.

Performance and Calibration of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is the central hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. This sampling device is made of steel plates acting as absorber and scintillating tiles as active medium. The wavelength-shifting fibers collect the light from scintillators and carry it to the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The analogue signals from the PMTs are amplified, shaped and digitized by sampling the signal every 25 ns and stored on detector until a trigger decision is received. The TileCal front-end electronics read out the signals produced by 9852 channels, whose dynamic range covers the interval from 30 MeV to 2 TeV. Each stage of the signal propagation from scintillation light to the signal reconstruction is monitored and calibrated. During LHC Run-2, high-momentum isolated muons and isolated hadrons have been used to study and validate the electromagnetic scale and the hadronic response, respectively. The time resolution was studied with multi-jet events. Results of performance studies that address calibration, stability, energy scale, uniformity and time resolution are presented.

The CMS Barrel Calorimeter Processor demonstrator (BCPv1) board evaluation

For the CERN LHC phase 2, the barrel region of the CMS electromagnetic (ECAL EB) and hadronic calorimeters (HCAL HB) require new back-end electronics for their readout. To this purpose, a first version of the ATCA-based blade, the Barrel Calorimeter Processor (BCPv1), has been developed. The performance of the optical links as well as clock distribution are also presented here. The BCPv1 has been tested together with front-end and trigger boards, as well as with the new DAQ and TCDS Hub (DTH) [1], to demonstrate that the BCPv1 meets the required specifications.

Time-assisted energy reconstruction in a highly-granular hadronic calorimeter

The software compensation algorithms developed for the CALICE Analog Hadron Calorimeter are extended to incorporate time information on the cell level, and the performance is studied in GEANT4 simulations with a detector model of a highly-granular SiPM-on-tile calorimeter. The addition of nanosecond-level time resolution is found to result in significant improvement of the energy resolution by approximately 3 % to 4 % for local software compensation compared to the software compensation based on local energy density alone, with further improvement possible with better timing resolution. The high correlation of energy density and time variables show that both provide sensitivity to correlated underlying shower features, which limits the potential of timing information when used as a global rather than a local variable.

The ATLAS Tile Calorimeter performance and its upgrade towards the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling calorimeter that forms the central region of the hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment. This sub-detector is to undergo its Phase-II upgrade during long-shutdown 3, in the years from 2025 to mid 2027, in preparation for the start of operation of the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) in 2027. In this proceeding, an overview of the TileCal HL-LHC on-detector electronics upgrade is provided. The detectors Run-II performance in the cases of EM scale calibration, calorimeter response, cell energy distribution and noise as well as a portion of the 2015-2018 Test-beam campaigns results are examined.

The ALPs from the top: searching for long lived axion-like particles from exotic top decays

We propose a search for long lived axion-like particles (ALPs) in exotic top decays. Flavour-violating ALPs appear as low energy effective theories for various new physics scenarios such as t-channel dark sectors or Froggatt-Nielsen models. In this case the top quark may decay to an ALP and an up- or charm-quark. For masses in the few GeV range, the ALP is long lived across most of the viable parameter space, suggesting a dedicated search. We propose to search for these long lived ALPs in toverline{t} events, using one top quark as a trigger. We focus on ALPs decaying in the hadronic calorimeter, and show that the ratio of energy deposits in the electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters as well as track vetoes can efficiently suppress Standard Model backgrounds. Our proposed search can probe exotic top branching ratios smaller than 10−4 with a conservative strategy at the upcoming LHC run, and potentially below the 10−7 level with more advanced methods. Finally we also show that measurements of single top production probe these branching ratios in the very short and very long lifetime limit at the 10−3 level.

Energy reconstruction of hadronic showers at the CERN PS and SPS using the Semi-Digital Hadronic Calorimeter

The CALICE Semi-Digital Hadronic CALorimeter (SDHCAL) is the first technological prototype in a family of high-granularity calorimeters developed by the CALICE Collaboration to equip the experiments of future lepton colliders. The SDHCAL is a sampling calorimeter using stainless steel for absorber and Glass Resistive Plate Chambers (GRPC) as a sensitive medium. The GRPC are read out by 1 cm× 1 cm pickup pads combined to a multi-electronics. The prototype was exposed to hadron beams in both the CERN PS and the SPS beamlines in 2015 allowing the test of the SDHCAL in a large energy range from 3 GeV to 80 GeV. After introducing the method used to select the hadrons of our data and reject the muon and electron contamination, we present the energy reconstruction approach that we apply to the data collected from both beamlines and we discuss the response linearity and the energy resolution of the SDHCAL. The results obtained in the two beamlines confirm the excellent SDHCAL performance observed with the data collected with the same prototype in the SPS beamline in 2012. They also show the stability of the SDHCAL in different beam conditions and different time periods.

Long Horizon Anomaly Prediction in Multivariate Time Series with Causal Autoencoders

Predictive maintenance is essential for complex industrial systems to foresee anomalies before major system faults or ultimate breakdown. However, the existing efforts on Industry 4.0 predictive monitoring are directed at semi-supervised anomaly detection with limited robustness for large systems, which are often accompanied by uncleaned and unlabeled data. We address the challenge of predicting anomalies through data-driven end-to-end deep learning models using early warning symptoms on multivariate time series sensor data. We introduce AnoP, a long multi-timestep anomaly prediction system based on unsupervised attention-based causal residual networks, to raise alerts for anomaly prevention. The experimental evaluation on large data sets from detector health monitoring of the Hadron Calorimeter of the CMS Experiment at LHC CERN demonstrates the promising efficacy of the proposed approach. AnoP predicted around 60% of the anomalies up to seven days ahead, and the majority of the missed anomalies are abnormalities with unpredictable noisy-like behavior. Moreover, it has discovered previously unknown anomalies in the calorimeter’s sensors.

Upgrade of ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High-Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, delivering an instantaneous luminosity up to 7.5×1034 cm−2 s−1, is expected to begin in 2029. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger (calorimeter output rate), higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026–2028. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse compatibility with the existing system was inserted in ATLAS in August 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The ongoing developments for on- and off-detector systems, together with expected performance characteristics and recent results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes will be discussed.

Search for neutral long-lived particles in pp collisions at sqrt{s} = 13 TeV that decay into displaced hadronic jets in the ATLAS calorimeter

A search for decays of pair-produced neutral long-lived particles (LLPs) is presented using 139 fb−1 of proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2015–2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Dedicated techniques were developed for the reconstruction of displaced jets produced by LLPs decaying hadronically in the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter. Two search regions are defined for different LLP kinematic regimes. The observed numbers of events are consistent with the expected background, and limits for several benchmark signals are determined. For a SM Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, branching ratios above 10% are excluded at 95% confidence level for values of c times LLP mean proper lifetime in the range between 20 mm and 10 m depending on the model. Upper limits are also set on the cross-section times branching ratio for scalars with a mass of 60 GeV and for masses between 200 GeV and 1 TeV.

Hadrons, better, faster, stronger

Motivated by the computational limitations of simulating interactions of particles in highly-granular detectors, there exists a concerted effort to build fast and exact machine-learning-based shower simulators. This work reports progress on two important fronts. First, the previously investigated Wasserstein generative adversarial network and bounded information bottleneck autoencoder generative models are improved and successful learning of hadronic showers initiated by charged pions in a segment of the hadronic calorimeter of the International Large Detector is demonstrated for the first time. Second, we consider how state-of-the-art reconstruction software applied to generated shower energies affects the obtainable energy response and resolution. While many challenges remain, these results constitute an important milestone in using generative models in a realistic setting.

CMS HCAL VTRx-induced communication loss and mitigation

The compact muon solenoid experiment phase 1 hadron calorimeter upgrade implemented the first large-scale application of VTRx modules, radiation and magnetic field tolerant optical transceivers. During run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, the CMS hadron calorimeter endcap experienced a failure of control communication that revealed a variable manufacturing weakness in the VTRx and affected nearly half of the communication links in the hadron calorimeter endcaps. The CMS hadron calorimeter team provided the first observation of this phenomenon, linked the loss to the VTRx, revealed its temperature dependence, and pioneered the mitigation tactic adopted by other LHC experiments. Aspects of the CMS hadron calorimeter team’s role in the larger VTRx investigations are presented.

Scintillator tile batch test of CEPC AHCAL

Hadron calorimeter (HCAL) is an essential sub-detector of the baseline detector system for Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC). We plan to build an Analog Hadron CALorimeter (AHCAL) prototype based on the Particle Flow Algorithm (PFA). The AHCAL of CEPC uses steel as the absorber and scintillator tiles read out by Silicon Photo-Multipliers (SiPMs) as the sensitive medium. The energy linearity and resolution of the calorimeter depend on the light yield uniformity of the sensitive medium. It is essential to qualify the entire detector production in order to select scintillator tiles with the uniformity of light yield within 10%. An automated batch test platform has been designed with 144 channels and an automated 3D servo motor. The paper summarizes the tests performed on more than 15000 scintillator tiles, and the SiPMs work at 59 V (overvoltage: 5 V). The measured light yield, corrected for the set-up response non-uniformity, is around 12.9 p.e. About 91.6% of scintillators (14219 pieces) are qualified within 10% of the light yield window.

The Data Acquisition System for the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Phase-II Upgrade Demonstrator

The tile calorimeter (TileCal) is the central hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at the large hadron collider (LHC). In 2025, the LHC will be upgraded leading to the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The HL-LHC will deliver an instantaneous luminosity up to seven times larger than the LHC nominal luminosity. The ATLAS Phase-II upgrade (2025–2027) will accommodate the subdetectors to the HL-LHC requirements. As part of this upgrade, the majority of the TileCal on-detector and off-detector electronics will be replaced using a new readout strategy, where the on-detector electronics will digitize and transmit digitized detector data to the off-detector electronics at the bunch crossing frequency (40 MHz). In the counting rooms, the off-detector electronics will compute reconstructed trigger objects for the first-level trigger and will store the digitized samples in pipelined buffers until the reception of a trigger acceptance signal. The off-detector electronics will also distribute the LHC clock to the on-detector electronics embedded within the digital data stream. The TileCal Phase-II upgrade project has undertaken an extensive research and development program that includes the development of a Demonstrator module to evaluate the performance of the new clock and readout architecture envisaged for the HL-LHC. The Demonstrator module equipped with the latest version of the on-detector electronics was built and inserted into the ATLAS experiment. The Demonstrator module is operated and read out using a Tile PreProcessor (TilePPr) Demonstrator which enables backward compatibility with the present ATLAS Trigger and Data AcQuisition (TDAQ), and the timing, trigger, and command (TTC) systems. This article describes in detail the main hardware and firmware components of the clock distribution and data acquisition systems for the Demonstrator module, focusing on the TilePPr Demonstrator.

ML Approaches for Centrality Determination with Forward Hadron Calorimeters in Heavy Ion Reactions

ML Approaches for Centrality Determination with Forward Hadron Calorimeters in Heavy Ion Reactions

Simulation of the spatial shift in detector response for polarized protons within a calorimeter

Measurement of the helicity dependent elastic electron–proton scattering cross section provides a key means of investigating parity violation within the proton. However, such measurements exhibit potential instrumental effects associated with the detection of polarized recoiled protons. In particular, spin–orbit interactions within a massive detector induce a systematic spatial shift in the detector signal. In this study, we determine the size of this shift using the Geant4 simulation toolkit. For a typical hadron calorimeter, we found a polarization dependent shift on the order of 0.01–0.1 mm, multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the typical spatial resolution seen in hadronic calorimeters. Additionally, we provide the custom modifications required of the Geant4 source code to implement the quasi-elastic scattering of polarized protons incident on nuclei in the detector. The modifications are readily extendable to generic matter sources, and can be used for the study of additional spin dependent observables in Geant4.