Exploring the structure of hadronic showers and the hadronic energy reconstruction with highly granular calorimeters

Electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters with an unprecedented high-granularity are being developed by the CALICE collaboration based on a variety of active sensor elements and absorber materials. We present the detailed structures of hadronic showers measured by the CALICE calorimeter prototypes to characterise the different stages of hadronic cascades in the calorimeters as well as comparisons with GEANT4-based simulations using different hadronic physics models. The high granularity of the detectors is exploited in the reconstruction of hadronic energy, both in individual detectors and combined electromagnetic and hadronic systems, making use of software compensation and semi-digital energy reconstruction. The performance of the reconstruction techniques for different electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, with silicon, scintillator and gaseous active elements are discussed.