A novel geometry for a sampling calorimeter employing inorganic scintillators
as an active medium is presented. To overcome the mechanical challenges of
construction, an innovative light collection geometry has been pioneered, that
minimises the complexity of construction. First test results are presented,
demonstrating a successful signal extraction. The geometry consists of a
sampling calorimeter with passive absorber layers interleaved with layers of an
active medium made of inorganic scintillating crystals. Wavelength-shifting
(WLS) fibres run along the four long, chamfered edges of the stack,
transporting the light to photodetectors at the rear. To maximise the amount of
scintillation light reaching the WLS fibres, the scintillator chamfers are
depolished. It is shown herein that this concept is working for cerium fluoride
(CeF3) as a scintillator. Coupled to it, several different types of
materials have been tested as WLS medium. In particular, materials that might
be sufficiently resistant to the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider
radiation environment, such as cerium-doped Lutetium-Yttrium Orthosilicate
(LYSO) and cerium-doped quartz, are compared to conventional plastic WLS
fibres. Finally, an outlook is presented on the possible optimisation of the
different components, and the construction and commissioning of a full
calorimeter cell prototype is presented.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings CALOR 2014, the 16th International
Conference on Calorimetry in High-Energy Physics, Giessen (Germany) 6 - 11
April 2014. To be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (10
pages, 15 figures
