Hadron Energy Resolution of the CALICE AHCAL and Software Compensation Approaches

The hadron energy resolution of a highly granular CALICE analogue scintillator-steel hadronic calorimeter was studied using pion test beam data. The stochastic term contribution to the energy resolution was estimated to be 58%/sqrt(E/GeV). To improve an energy resolution, local and global software compensation techniques were developed which exploit an unprecedented granularity of the calorimeter and are based on event-by-event analysis of the energy density spectra. The application of either local or global software compensation technique results in reducing of stochastic term contribution down to 45%/sqrt(E/GeV). The achieved improvement of single particle energy resolution for pions is about 20% in the energy range from 10 to 80 GeV.