Tungsten absorber stack, 30 neat layers for the calorimeter. Our special setup will go all the way in the back.
The excitement is growing: After I saw the first pieces for the absorber structure for our test beam in the fall during my last trip to CERN, photographic proof is now circulating that the mechanics are completely assembled: Several tons of Tungsten, all arranged in 30 vertical plates. Behind it all will go a special setup we are developing in Munich to make a first measurement of the time structure of the hadronic showers in this new calorimeter. This is one of the key open question for the hadron calorimeter at CLIC: Since many unwanted reactions will take place due to the extremely high energy of the collider, it is important to be able to determine exactly at which time a certain reaction took place. And for this it is important to know how long the detector itself takes to react to the passage of the particles.
Signs of life: First test pulses on the screen, with my student Lars pointig at it with some excitement.
To study this, we prepared 15 scintillator tiles that we read out with special oscilloscopes with a time resolution of better than 1 nanosecond. Now things are coming together: The scintillator tiles are wrapped in reflective foil, the support frame that will go into the calorimeter at CERN is prepared, and the lights are on on our data acquisition. Two of my PhD students are now very busy to write the code to control all this and read out the data. Just a few hours ago, we saw first signs of life: Test pulses recorded all the way through our electronics chain!
On Sunday, all of this will go to CERN, for a first integration test and some first exposure to muons from the accelerator. That is the first real stress test, and so far things are looking good. Exciting times ahead, and we are looking forward to successful data taking this fall…
Lights on: Oscilloscope modules that plug into our data acquisition PC - waiting for data!
A row of scintillator tiles for timing measurements - Where our data comes from.
